Acceptance refers to unconditional, positive regard for the individual by the therapist (Rogers, 1969). In a person-centered approach to art therapy, unconditional, positive regard for the person’s art expressions is central to the experience. The therapist trusts the abilities of the person to move in positive directions and offers an atmo-sphere in which art expression is accepted without judgment. It is important to con-vey that creative work does not need to be aesthetic or beautiful, but that the purpose is to express and release thoughts and feelings through the modality. Person-centered art therapy also avoids evaluation and interference with the creative process to en-courage self-direction, self-evaluation, and responsibility in treatment.
Natalie Rogers (1997), an expressive arts therapist and the daughter of Carl Rogers, is recognized as a major proponent of the person-centered approach to art therapy. Although her approach involves not only visual art, but all art forms, she does provide groundwork for the theory and practice of person-centered art therapy.
A case vignette from the work of Natalie Rogers (1999) provides an example of how person-centered principles are applied to practice.
If the facilitator intends to lead an individual in an exercise to stimulate art or movement expression and self-awareness, then he or she has the task of helping that individual talk about it. Knowing that the artist takes a risk in sharing that previously unknown aspect of the self, the facilitator needs to treat the product with great respect.
It is important to me that we truly hear and respect the artist’s personal experience.
Therefore, I always ask the artist to speak first, giving her feelings, meanings, and inter-pretations of the piece. To offer feedback before hearing what it represents to the artist is to rob that person of their fresh, spontaneous reaction to the work. If we wish to create an environment for the client’s self-direction and self-insight, it is necessary to honor her experience.
After inviting the individual to share thoughts and feelings about her art, I ask “Do you honestly want my reactions?” If so, I offer my congruent feelings in statements that make it clear that these are my projections on her art. I do not interpret a person’s art.
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There is a fine line, an important nuance, between making congruent personal responses and interpreting another’s work. I am owning my reactions when I preface my feedback with, “When I look at your art, I feel. . . . Or, in witnessing your painting, I felt . . . .”
Giving feedback in this manner is very different from saying, “This art shows how de-pressed you are, or how chaotic your life is.” . . . Telling a person in a declarative way what her art means takes away the sense of self-knowledge. (p. 122)
Natalie Rogers echoes the concepts developed by her father more than 40 years ago.
However, she also demonstrates the power of art expression to enhance a person-centered approach, illustrating through her work how individual creativity is indeed a powerful tool in self-realization and self-actualization.
GESTALT APPROACH
Gestalt therapy is an experiential approach that, like other humanistic approaches, emerged in reaction to psychoanalysis. The word “Gestalt” refers to the whole form or configuration which is greater than the sum of its parts. The aim of a Gestalt ap-proach is to encourage and insist on responsible, honest, direct, and authentic com-munication between the person and therapist. As in existential and person-centered approaches, therapy is a mutual exploration of feelings and thoughts between client and therapist. The therapist is also part of the overall “Gestalt” and is considered part of the whole configuration.
Gestalt therapists encourage active participation and enactment by the individ-ual, believing that through sensory–motor activation, there is recognition and clarifi-cation of problems. The experiential nature of Gestalt therapy led to the integration of art activities and several individuals have contributed to the development of a
“Gestalt art therapy” theory. Joseph Zinker (1977), a Gestalt therapist and sculptor, promoted the multimodal use of creative expression (meaning using many art forms and modalities; see Chapter 9, this volume) based on Gestalt theory. He believed that the art expression is therapeutic because it allows people to know themselves as a whole person in a short time, and being able to perceive the whole is consonant with the idea of the Gestalt. Violet Oaklander (1978) developed a Gestalt approach to work with children and families through art, play, and other sensory modalities. Art therapist Mala Betensky (1973) combined phenomenological approaches with Gestalt principles to develop a way for the therapist and client to determine what was present in the image.
Of all therapists who have used Gestalt principles in their clinical work, art ther-apist Janie Rhyne is best known for developing the idea of the “Gestalt art experi-ence.” Rhyne studied with Gestalt therapist, Fritz Perls (1969), known for his work at Esalen in the 1960s; Perls experimented with techniques that later formed some of the basis for Rhyne’s ideas integrating art therapy. Rhyne (1995) sums up Gestalt art therapy as an experience of focusing on the active movement in the art expression;
encouraging clients to consider forms and patterns of their visual messages and to ac-tively perceive what is going on in lines, shapes, textures, colors, and movements;
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and evoking in clients a sense of how their forms can express personal meaning. Art expression allows individuals to know themselves as a whole person; in a sense, the art expression is a “gestalt” of that person within that moment. The creative process of art making is seen as valuable in helping the person become a more fully integrat-ed human being. Rhyne observintegrat-ed that Gestalt art therapy addresses the entire range of personal expressiveness, including visual, sound, body language, and verbal com-munication. This is reminiscent of an expressive arts therapy approach described in detail in Chapter 9 (this volume).
Thompson-Taupin (1976) explains some of the principles of Gestalt art therapy in the following brief example, called the “line game”:
The line game is played by tacking a large sheet of paper on the wall and having on hand a basket of crayons or pieces of chalk of various colors. One person at a time is “it.”
That person comes up to the paper and is told, “Select a color and draw a line or shape.”
That being done, he is told, “Now another with different color.” I usually ask the person to make the sound or movement of each line or shape. Other group members are encour-aged to mimic and get into the spirit of how each line feels to the person who is “it.” At this point, many choices are open. One possibility is the “gestalting” of the two lines or shapes by “it.” Another is to say to “it.” Now use the people in the group to be your lines and dramatize what is going on. You are the director of the play for the next few minutes—and you can also be one of the characters. It’s your show. (p. 113)
A Gestalt art therapy or “art experience” is appropriate for people who are ca-pable, active, and committed to realizing and achieving their own potential. They are generally self-directed and self-motivated; the therapist facilitates the session, but it is the person who is ultimately responsible for meeting goals and making self-evaluations.
The Gestalt art therapy approach can be useful with individuals; it has also been suc-cessfully employed in groupwork (Rhyne, 1995), capitalizing on group interaction as a catalyst to self-exploration.
TRANSPERSONAL APPROACH
A transpersonal approach to art therapy has emerged from the humanistic ap-proaches described in the previous section and also incorporates the belief that what is beyond the self is important to the person’s well-being. As described by Boorstein (1996), “Transpersonal psychology . . . recognizes the yearning for spiritual unfold-ing as one of the givens of human growth and development” (p. 5). This fourth force in psychology was officially founded by Maslow (1968), Sutich (1969), and others and concerns itself with both the development of the self and the urge to push be-yond the boundaries of the self in other areas of consciousness. The transpersonal ap-proach to art therapy strives to address mind, body, and spirit through a combina-tion of art expression, humanistic principles, mind–body concepts, and spiritual practices such as contemplation and meditation.
Franklin, Farrelly-Hansen, Marek, Swan, and Wallingford (2000) note that Carl Jung was perhaps the first practitioner of a transpersonal approach to art therapy
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cause he believed that individuation process required the exploration and integration of the spiritual dimension as expressed through the imagery of dreams and art (Jung, 1964). Florence Cane (1951) who developed the “scribble technique” (see Chapter 2, this volume), combined art activities with meditative awareness, also articulating the-ories that became the basis for a transpersonal approach to art therapy. Later, Garai (1976), who pioneered the humanistic approach to art therapy, also explored how art expression led to self-transcendence, and Joan Kellogg (1978) noted the value of artistic expression in accessing transpersonal aspects of the self through mandala drawings. Others have connected art expression with spirituality (Allen, 1995;
Malchiodi, 2002; B. Moon, 1997; C. Moon, 1989), linked it to models of shamanic healing (McNiff, 1981), and have looked at the relationship between spiritual beliefs and the practice of art therapy (Chickerneo, 1993; Farelly-Hansen, 2001; Feen-Calligan, 1995; Horovitz-Darby, 1994).
Many of the concepts on which the transpersonal approach to art therapy is based are reflected in humanistic approaches to treatment. For example, much of transpersonal work is similar to the person-centered approach that maintains the person’s intrinsic ability to achieve growth and health. The teaching of meditation is consonant with Carl Rogers’s idea of staying in the moment with the person and em-powering the individual to take charge of personal change and self-realization. Em-phasis on questions such as “Who am I?” and “What is the meaning of life?” reflect an existential component in transpersonal art therapy. Mind–body techniques inte-grated within the transpersonal framework mirror current thinking about imagery as treatment (Achterberg, 1985) and are inclusive of physical symptoms as expressions of transpersonal aspects of the self.
A therapist working from a transpersonal approach to art therapy would ad-dress the person’s needs to improve other areas of life such as relationships or life sat-isfaction, but this approach also includes recognizing spiritual emergencies (Grof &
Grof, 1989) such as emotional crises, serious illness, or death. Art expression is seen as a way to explore that which is “beyond the self” and as a process to access to nonordinary states of consciousness. The following brief example illustrates some transpersonal approaches to working with an adult whose experience with cancer caused her to confront spiritual beliefs and the possibility of death.