What About Art Therapy Programs?

By the time the art therapy programs have been chosen in the Art Therapy school of choice, students should have already declared this their major primary field of study, which is considered the most important decision they will ever make. According to one college, the Ursuline College Graduate pre-requisites, many prerequisite courses will have been already completed in college to qualify for upper-level courses, with a Bachelor’s degree in art, psychology, behavioral science, social science, or a related field already acquired before art therapy programs can begin.

Schools that teach art therapy programs require the student to show evidence of their ability to do graduate work in the art therapy field. Not a simple field, this requires a 3.0 grade point average or above, which is based on a 4.0 system. The reason for this is because anything as a high school freshman (or 9th grade) and on up will be added to the cumulative GPA, which will effect the outcome of the schools seeking admittance to, and the scholarships being applied for. When applying to a school which teaches art therapy programs, this will have great impact on whether or not the student will be accepted.

Art therapy programs have quite a few prerequisites, which make art therapy classes easier to understand and to apply to one’s ability to learn. One such group of prerequisites to art therapy programs is a completed minimum of 18 semester hours in studio art–drawing, painting, clay or sculpture. Another is a minimum of 12 semester hours in Psychology, a prerequisite that involves four areas: General Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Personality or Counseling Development, and Abnormal Psychology or Psychopathology. And last but not least is some experience in a human service context field working with people on some level.

U.S. News has a partial list of 26 Art Therapy Schools which have quality art therapy programs under a national listing of the top “America’s Best Colleges 2008″ list. When choosing the college major for a future in art therapy, working with people of all types, ages, and backgrounds will be part of the job description. Working in art therapy uses visual artistic expression by the client to allow them to safely express hidden emotions and to explore their personal problems. The end result can enable them to achieve positive change in their lives, combined with personal growth. The major difference in art therapy, as compared to traditional psychological therapies, is that it consists of a three-way process. This process is combination of efforts between the client, therapist, and the artwork itself.

Art therapy programs have professionals to train the prospective art therapist to work in many different ways. Some of these ways are to work with other professionals as a team; assess the individual needs of the client; listen to them and provide guidance; work creatively with them in a therapeutic setting; enable the client themselves to explore their own creativity, their art work, and its process; and most important, maintain the latest research and new ideas regarding the latest developments of art therapy.

The Top Art Therapy Courses

Art therapy courses for Art Therapists are fast becoming an international phenomenon, spreading from the United States clear to Northern Ireland. But in the United States alone, the majority of art therapy education is located on both coasts only. In the U.S. College Search, only 42 Art Therapy Colleges and Universities are listed, as compared to 53 for Music Therapy.

The AATA, or American Art Therapy Association, Inc., has a list of credited schools they personally have endorses for a specific period of time, not going over seven years. And the AATA accepts long distance learning, as long as they follow the same standards of approval that apply to all programs.

The student applying for the Art Therapy courses is required to have a bachelor’s degree from any accredited institution in the United States to apply for Master-level Art Therapy courses. Another option is to be already accepted into a bachelor-master duel degree program in art therapy. But if the student is coming into the United States from another country, an academic preparation that is equivalent from the out-of-country institution is required.

Each student needs to have a portfolio of their original artwork to the school in order to be admitted to the art therapy courses. The purpose is to demonstrate their competence of using the art materials in their work. Once they are admitted, they need to successfully finish in twelve months:

• Minimum of 18 credit semester hours of study with studio art, using a variety of materials and assorted processes.
• Minimum of 12 credit semester hours of study in psychology, including developmental psychology and abnormal psychology.

In order for the art therapy courses to pertain to a Master’s degree, 48-graduate semester credits are required to meet the graduate level art therapy education standards. Some states may require 60-graduate semester credit for licensing or clinical education standards.

There are several required content areas to qualify for admittance to the art therapy courses:

• Minimum of 24 semester credits in art therapy content
• History and theory of art therapy
• Techniques of practice in art therapy
• Application of art therapy with people in different treatment settings
• Group work
• Art therapy assessment
• Ethical and legal issues of art therapy practice
• Standards of practice in art therapy
• Cultural and social diversity
• Thesis or culminating project
• Required related content areas
• Psychopathology
• Human growth and development
• Counseling and psychological theories
• Cultural and social diversity
• Assessment
• Research
• Studio Art
• Career and lifestyle development
• Practicum and Internship
• Minimum of 100 hours of supervised art therapy practicum
• Minimum of 600 hours of supervised art therapy internship over a minimum of two academic terms

Child Art Therapy for Probing the Unconscious

Child art therapy involves different practices in education, rehabilitation and psychotherapy. A successful field today where art is incorporated into the psychotherapy, child art therapy is used as a means for children and their art therapist to not only visual the unconscious but also to eventually recognize it on a conscious level. Used to promote healing, art on a therapeutic level is used in many settings to benefit the child.

One of these major settings involve the school, where the art therapist helps the child with internal conflicts, using the child’s artwork to put into some form of positive action a change within. Child art therapy does not involve the art therapist alone, but the teaching and counseling staff in addition to the child’s parents and family members.

Many times, the students who are involved within the art therapy setting are special education students who are having difficulty. In this case, the child art therapy is used for conditions such as learning disabilities, emotional problems and disturbances, behavior disorders, and even physical handicaps that are the result of impaired gross and fine mother control.

Child art therapy requires a Masters level in education, which would be able to recognize the six stages of development in children’s drawings in addition to being able to connect intellectual growth in the child, their psychosocial stages of development, and this correspondence to the six stages of development in the child’s drawings. These six stages fall within certain age groups:

• The Scribble Stage - occurs 18 months to two years of age
This age demonstrates the ability to be aware of patterns, utilizing hand-eye coordination.

• The Pre-Schematic Stage - occurs four to seven years
The child may draw human figures with circles, and two dangling lines for legs.

• The Schematic Stage -occurs seven to nine years
The characteristics of this age group show what the child is thinking vs. what they are actually seeing.

• The Dawning Realism - occurs nine or two years
Demonstrating how things “really look” become important, which causes excessive frustration

When using child art therapy, the child is usually given five or six art directions by the art therapist. They will represent the child’s perception of themselves, their family, their school, or any aspect of their environment. When this is done, they will be evaluated by the art therapist in addition to looking at the child’s academic history, their personal development, and their family. Many things need to be evaluated–the child’s culture, their home life, or their financial situation, as drawings differ across the spectrum. One thing that has been noticed is when learning disabled children are found to have low intelligence measurements on standardized tests, they are significantly more advanced in creative and visual intelligence. A change such as adding a visual component may be needed to enhance their learning.

Jung–Art Therapy

Carl S. Jung–Art Therapy in the Making

Carl Jung, known for the Jung art therapy theory, was one of the colleagues of the famous Austrian psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud, the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology. Freud became internationally recognized with his groundbreaking theories regarding the conscious vs. unconscious parts of the mind. Simultaneously beginning his Jung art therapy theories, Jung felt that even though Freud made the goal of his therapy the unconscious conscious, he felt that it was made to sound as if it were an unpleasant “cauldron of seething desires.”

But according to the American Art Therapy Association, Inc., Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud together, along with many other psychiatric individuals at the time, had a big hand in the development of art therapy. It was thought that these historical practitioners had the same insight that entered into the development of art therapy, along with its application of conflict resolution. The healing and learning that was derived from the “talk therapy” these men eventually became known for, was thought to have built a base for uncovering the unconscious levels of the mind. But many feel that it was the Jung art therapy that seemed to be the method upon which today’s art therapy received its roots.

One of the tools Carl Jung used for his patients to express their unconscious feelings was art, bringing forth the Jung art therapy method. Influenced by both psychology and psychiatry, Jung’s influence was based on his devotion to the psychological meaning that was inside of each art piece. Freud himself never had his patients do their own artwork, but Carl Jung encouraged it. “To paint what we see before us, ” Jung wrote, “is a different art from painting what we see within.”

Totally rejecting Freud’s theories, Jung expanded the field of psychoanalysis on a personal level. The Jung art therapy included artwork of all levels, the interaction of mythology and its influence on the present moment, and the thoughts of native people which included the round spiritual mandala and the Sanskrit. Many felt he had more common sense than Freud, as the he felt the individual’s psyche had more than one interacting systems. One of these was the ego, as he dismissed Freud’s superego and id, feeling that the ego alone was considered a personal unconscious state of the mind but as a fundamental collective unconscious one.

With much more of an optimistic view of art than did Freud, with his Jung art therapy views Carl Jung felt that psychological art originated within the psyche and was considered to be intelligible to the general mass. But even more, he discovered that another style called visionary art, dew on the collective unconscious and was a lot deeper and with less individual nature. This sort of art were of images–appearing in dreams and in the art form–and were more spontaneoius and were considered to be more fulfilling images. He considered them as metaphors that held the troubled individual’s separate worlds together in a world of trauma and chaos.