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.

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.

Using Clip Art for Massage Therapy

When it comes to promoting a business in massage therapy, using clip art for massage therapy is the cheapest and wisest way to go. If this does not sound accurate, check out the price for good quality original artwork, unless that massage therapist is also an excellent artist who does his or her own clip art. Once this is done, it will become quite apparent that high quality clip art for massage therapy is more than a bargain.

The only problem with choosing good clip art for massage therapy is there is too much to pick from. Considered as pre-made images to illustrate any graphic arts medium, almost anyone in advertising or business uses clip art anymore. Not including stock photography the majority of the time, clip art is usually done by hand or by computer software. Available in black and white, or in full color, the term “clip art” originally began when people cut out certain images from pre-existing art work to form a new piece of art work.

With so much to pick from, it is difficult to pick the “right” type of clip art for a person’s advertising to promote their massage business, unless they know what they want to say and how to say it. Many styles and concepts are used, such as humorous, serious, illustrative, wood block, sketchy, abstract, realistic, and so on. The main thing is to choose the type of clip art for massage therapy that illustrates an idea or tells a story–contributing a specific meaning to a certain message that the message owner wants to send out.

Learning to use visual language in addition to wordage will make a person better equipped to expand their message business. Using borders and background as decorative elements to break up space, using diversity that is like none others, along with many other ways to send out a message while using clip art for massage therapy ideas include:

• Visual Puns - one or two possible meanings can be portrayed by one or two symbols.
• Symbol - using a visual image of something that is invisible.
• Sign - the use of a shorthand device that actually stands for something else.
• Metaphor - a likeness between two ideas portrayed by a likeness
• Icon - image used to suggest a meaning
• Cliché - an image with a widely understood meaning.

Many artists and designers have said, “If concept is what you say, style is how you phrase it.” This is the reason one artist can come up with so many different ideas for one simple meaning. But in truth, professional designers do not have the magic formula to make their work better than another one does. They only can communicate the message better, using art and words alone.

The History of Art Therapy

It is difficult to look at the history of art therapy and its true meaning until one goes back to the history of the visual arts, where art was not art but was considered a trade or workmanship by the general mass or tradesmen. Artistic symbols were used as visual records of self-expression and communication. And even though ancient healing involved art in a multitude of forms and ideas, the history of art therapy was non-existent over the centuries until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, yet art was not.

The first men to apply art therapy to their psychiatry field were Ambrose Tardieu and Paul-Max Simon. French psychiatrists, they published studies regarding the artwork of the mentally ill. Looking at similar characteristics and symbolism of the patient’s artwork, these men viewed the developing history of art therapy as one of the best effective diagnostic tools in order to identify a specific type of mental illness or traumatic event of the time.

Later on, Margaret Naumburg incorporated the field of art into psychotherapy in order for her own patients to visualize and recognize their unconscious state of mind. Using this form of psychological counseling, she founded the Walden School in the year 1915 to apply her findings to her student’s artwork. To this day, she is considered the actual founder of art therapy in the United States, after publishing quite heavily on the subject and teaching art therapy seminars at the New York University in the 1950s. From this moment on, the history of art therapy had a new beginning that would lead to a guarantee of its success.

Deeply rooted in the theories of Freud and Jung, both the conscious and subconscious play a major part in the two part process of art therapy–the creation of art and having its meaning discovered. The history of art therapy has shown that visual images and symbols are easily accessible to the human mind, and is considered to be the most natural form of communication. Each patient, regardless of their problem or age, is encouraged to visualize something in their mind they cannot talk about, yet have strong feelings and emotions about it. The art therapist then reviews it to have the patient interpret it.

As the field of art therapy progresses, it is centered on visual mediums, and is mainly used in the mental health treatment. But it can also be used with traditional medicine in order to treat organic diseases and conditions. It is documented over the years through the history of art therapy that art therapy allows the patients to develop their own style of coping skills, and promotes healing by relieving their stress.