Expressive Art Therapies

History

Each of the expressive art therapies can trace its origins to early human use of the arts for beneficial means. One can find examples of music and dance used as medicine in Greek times; drama provided cathartic experiences for theater audiences. Islamic [Page 246]doctors in the 1st century CE developed scientific principles for using music to treat both physical and psychological ailments. Residents of European psychiatric asylums in the 1800s drew on any available surface or used bread as a medium for sculpture. There are abundant examples in non-Western societies of using various art forms knitted together in healing ceremonies in which an entire community participates.

As the practice of psychotherapy developed in Europe and the United States in the 1940s, so did the specific expressive art therapies. Sigmund Freud said that, although his patients said they had difficulty talking about their dreams, they said they could draw them. Although Freud did not routinely ask for such drawings, Carl Jung did; he himself painted and encouraged artistic activities in his patients. One can find sporadic references to the use of the arts in various psychiatric papers of the first half of the 20th century.

Although there are many features the expressive art therapies share, they developed independently. Some of the people who developed the earliest programs were nurses and occupational therapists, but many were artists, musicians, dancers, and educators. During World War II, military hospitals asked musicians to provide music as a morale booster and a sedative to aid the recovering soldiers. Soon these so-called auxiliary therapies were permitted in other hospitals and residential programs because many regressed or difficult patients responded to them.

Benefits of the Expressive Art Therapies

As a group, the expressive art therapies share certain features (although there are some properties unique to a specific art form). Perhaps the most frequently discussed common denominator is that art, dance, and music make it possible to express what could not be told in words. Traumatized people often cannot describe their experiences because they suffer from alexithymia (lack of words for feelings). It has been thought that this incapacity to use words for emotions was a character trait. However, clinical experience shows it to be a psychological state. When an individual is treated for trauma, the alexithymia goes into remission. Using drawing materials, musical instruments, or one's own body, the traumatic experience is evoked, depicted, represented, or embodied in such a way that others can help to describe and label the experience. A therapist or a member of a therapy group can offer a word or phrase to make a bridge to verbal content.

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