Long term individual art psychotherapy. Art for art's sake: The effect of early relational trauma

Abstract

This is a retrospective analysis of individual art therapy lasting six years. Outcome measures, patient ratings and feedback, and the opinion of the therapist indicated improvement that was maintained up to three years follow-up. Process data, consisting of sessional outcome measures, indicated the severity of problems and a wide and dramatic fluctuation on a weekly basis. The examination of art work alongside data from researchers illustrated a series of phases in therapy. This material has been previously published and a summary is presented here. Given the patient's presentation, the long length of therapy was unexpected. In this paper the art therapist offers a formulation of the patient's problems and considers why art therapy was helpful when the patient had failed to improve from previous therapies. Concepts of attachment theory linked to neuroscience are used to enlighten the understanding of this case.

Keywords:

• Long term
• outcome
• process
• art as data
• attachment
• neuroscience

Acknowledgements

Thanks to colleagues Mike Lucock and Chris Leach through whom the worlds of art therapy and research came together. Their advice on the development of this paper was appreciated. Thanks also to Claire Darling and the psychotherapy team who provided the context and made the clinical work possible.