Risk discourse in art therapy: Revisiting Neil Springham's Inscape paper on art and risk

Abstract

In view of an increasing emphasis on risk management in the therapy professions, this paper reconsiders Neil Springham's (2008) Inscape paper, ‘Through the eyes of the law: What is it about art that can harm people?’. The author asks how the simultaneously individualising and totalising tendencies of risk discourse might shape our relationships with our clients, each other and ourselves. She notes that many of her colleagues have commended Springham's focus on the serious risks associated with the use of art in therapeutic contexts, and have read his work as an endorsement of their expertise. While acknowledging the salience of the problematisation of art and risk, the author suggests that it is important to question the implications of risk discourse for art therapy. She argues that Springham's paper can be seen as a performance of expert knowledge, rather than simply a description of events. The current paper problematises the politics of representation in Springham's paper, particularly the concept of co-authorship, and raises questions about the generalisation of his findings to the field of arts and health. The current paper also deconstructs the slippages between legal and therapeutic discourse in Springham's text, thereby disrupting what might otherwise become an incontrovertible truth.

Keywords:

• Art psychotherapy
• arts and health
• risk
• discourse
• law
• deconstruction

Notes

1. Butler is not suggesting a rejection of psychoanalysis per se, but of its most powerfully normative and pathologising dimensions.