A consideration of the usefulness of art therapy for psychotic clients with artistic identities

Abstract

At a time when the appropriateness of the term art therapy is being continually questioned by practitioners, it would seem relevant to explore the significance of the word art from the clients point of view. As I work in a psychiatric hospital I propose to do this by referring to the development of the use of art within psychiatric institutions and the emergence of the discipline of art therapy. I shall include three short case histories of psychotic clients, with whom I work, who see themselves as artists, in an attempt to evaluate whether this view is damaging or beneficial. I intend to compare the case subjects with historical figures cited in the literature in order to elicit comparisons and differences between them and my art therapy clients. In discussing my own clients, I find myself not so much asking the question “Does Therapy Disrupt The Creative Process” (Cardinal, Fuller, Wilson, Gordon 1983), but “Does the artistic identity disrupt the therapy process?”