art therapy

Art Therapy is a complement to psychological counseling which uses artistic creations of the patient to bring to light underlying problems which for various reasons words may not be able to express.

Patients are asked to answer questions, illustrate experiences or otherwise express themselves through drawing, painting, sculpting in clay or any other medium, and the meaning of the work produced is then discussed with the counselor to explore the thoughts or emotions thus revealed.

Art therapy has been especially useful for helping young children who have suffered traumatic experiences, to help non-English speakers through therapy or to stimulate memory retrieval in geriatric patients. It is also useful in circumventing barriers to psychoanalysis in overly intellectual, verbal adults. Pioneered in the 1930s in Germany, the practice quickly spread to psychotherapists in Britain and North America.

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