In Memoriam: Dr. Frances F. Kaplan, Editor of Art Therapy (2001–2005)

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

—Carl Sagan

The art therapy profession lost one of its most disciplined analytic thinkers this year when former editor Dr. Frances F. Kaplan passed away at age 80, after a long illness. For those who called her mentor, teacher, colleague, or guide, she inspired with her unwavering commitment to helping us be the most effective art therapists we could be. Steadfast in the pursuit of excellence, she challenged the field to pierce long-held myths and biases and, in the process, produce the scientific evidence necessary for an art-based theory of art therapy.

“Throughout my life,” she wrote, echoing the experience of many art therapists to follow, “I’ve felt the urge to bring together seemingly disparate entities” (Kaplan, 2006, p. 11). As a young adult, she studied art but pragmatically chose to major in chemistry. When she later discovered art therapy, she adopted it as a discipline “with one foot in art and one foot in science” (Kaplan, 2014, p. 115). Having trained in both, she saw no contradiction or dichotomy—only a like-minded continuum. Not only do “art and science have more than a speaking acquaintance,” she contended, but “a marriage resulting in [their] stable and enduring union is entirely possible” in art therapy (Kaplan, 1998b, p. 94).

To her amazement, she realized that not every art therapist agreed with this view. She became dedicated to articulating a scientific approach to art therapy and the role of research in particular. As the editor of this journal, Frances saw much outmoded, erroneous thinking in the field, and chafed equally at those who described art therapy as a form of magic and those who argued for a universal understanding of symbols found in artworks. “There is sufficient evidence in the real world of everyday existence to no longer need such justifications” for art therapy, she commented, asserting that “it is well past the time for art therapists to think and write more cogently about ideas leading to well-formed theory, to move into an art–psychological universe of ideas” (Kaplan, 2014, p. 118).

To prevent misunderstanding, Frances took great pains to explain herself, humbly critiquing her own research to illustrate how easily people can be fooled by data or reach for facile explanations. In her studies of how anger is expressed in drawing, for example, it was only after several replications with different age groups that she unexpectedly discovered her results were more related to age than to anger, which demonstrated the inaccuracy of her assumptions and the importance of remaining tentative in one’s claims (Kaplan, 1998b). “Only when we have a body of data that largely points in the same direction can we truly feel confident that we have gained new understanding” (Kaplan, 2001, p. 143).

Frances applied this principle of reasoned skepticism to one of her most important contributions to the literature, in my view, which was her thorough examination of art as a basis of art therapy assessment (see Kaplan, 2000, 2003a, 2010, 2012). Taking a “closer look at some of the received ‘wisdom’ concerning the interpretation of client art” (Kaplan, 1998b, p. 96), her review of the evidence revealed that many of the field’s propositions—the projective drawing hypothesis (i.e., that a drawing will reveal unconscious representations and personality traits), in particular—do not hold up. Art assessment, she concluded, should be approached as less a formal test than as a way to increase understanding of the client based on interactions with art materials (Kaplan, 2012). Although she acknowledged art’s mysterious lure, Frances preferred the greater promise of neuroscience to substantiate the cognitive-behavioral processes of art. She observed with great excitement that 21st-century art therapists were beginning to acquire the knowledge and accompanying language of neuroscience to promote an integrated mind–body approach (Kaplan, 2008). Her vision of a true melding of art and science is coming to fruition today.

Reading her body of work—which spans 40 years and includes two books, several book chapters and essays, 11 editorials, 12 scholarly research articles, and numerous book reviews from her years as the book review editor of The Arts in Psychotherapy—I cannot help but wonder how her earlier worldview as a chemist (and beloved spouse of a chemist) might have guided her particular trajectory in art therapy. Perhaps Frances was unique as one who approached a fellow art therapist’s claims with an attitude of “That’s interesting … I wonder if it is true?” For a chemist, the question “What evidence do we have for that?” is the beginning of a thrilling, deep dive into the matter of the universe; in the daily life of an art therapist, however, it has been taken as a threat to our worth. It might take some time to catch up to Frances and creatively embrace, as neither a mandate to follow nor thing to resist, the power of evidence to advance art therapy.

A basic fact of both chemistry and art therapy is that something new and unique is produced when certain elements are combined. For Frances, the struggle involved in such a transformation sometimes “makes the eventual solution all the sweeter” (Kaplan, 2003d, p. 190). She was mostly nonplussed by art therapy’s historic tensions, seeing conflict as inevitable in creativity and simply to be expected in her project of bringing together worldviews, ideas, and perspectives. It should come as no surprise that she taught courses in conflict resolution and was a lifelong social activist, in both the denuclearization and U.S. peace movements. From her years of activism, she nurtured an enduring interest in promoting change on both individual and societal levels. Frances contemplated the possibility that art therapy and social action cannot, or at least should not, be separated (Kaplan, 2006, p. 13). No matter how art therapists practiced, “we would do well to ‘think’ social action” (p. 14), whether as a method of action or a state of mind brought to bear on the problems we and our clients face.

We might regard Frances Kaplan as art therapy’s Carl Sagan, the brilliant researcher who popularized science while painstakingly debunking false claims. Inspired by his work, Frances believed that art therapy has much to gain from science, especially as “a discipline that professes to be based on truth” (Kaplan, 1998b, p. 94). She urged us to become wide awake and to study how the world works, for otherwise needed change cannot take root. Most compelling for our times, we must not fail to ask questions and interrogate those who claim to know what is true, so as to not fall victim to groupthink, authoritarians, or demagogues. We have a responsibility to provide clients with that which enhances quality of life while “remaining grounded in the amazing yet tangible world depicted by science’s brush” (p. 97). From Dr. Frances F. Kaplan’s legacy, we know that achieving this delicate balance requires grace, clarity, and wisdom.