Art Therapy - History

History

Art therapy is a relatively young therapeutic discipline. It first began around the mid-20th Century, arising independently in English-speaking and European areas. In England, as in the U.S., the roots of art therapy lay mainly in art education, the practice of art, and developmental psychology.

According to David Edwards, an art therapist in Britain, “(n)umerous and often conflicting definitions of art therapy have been advanced since the term, and later the profession, first emerged in the late 1940s (Waller and Gilroy, 1978).” Edwards states, “in the UK, the artist Adrian Hill is generally acknowledged to have been the first person to use the term ‘art therapy’ to describe the therapeutic application of image making. For Hill, who had discovered the therapeutic benefits of drawing and painting while recovering from tuberculosis, the value of art therapy lay in ‘completely engrossing the mind (as well as the fingers) … releasing the creative energy of the frequently inhibited patient’ (Hill, 1948: 101–102). This, Hill suggested, enabled the patient to ‘build up a strong defence against his misfortunes’ (Hill, 1948: 103).” So, the birth of art therapy goes back to the painter, Adrian Hill, who suggested artistic work to his fellow inpatients, while he was treated in a tuberculosis (T.B.) sanatorium. That began his artistic work with patients, which was documented in 1945 in his book, Art Versus Illness.

The artist Edward Adamson (1911-1996), recently demobilised after WW2, joined Adrian Hill to extend Hill’s work to the British long stay mental hospitals. Adamson started at Netherne Hospital in Surrey in 1946, and continued until his retirement in 1981. Adamson established an open art studio, allowing people to come and paint: a radical act when those detained in the 'asylums' were living in bleak conditions, profoundly excluded from society, with minimum dignity, autonomy or even personal possessions. He continued, working alone with hundreds of people, for 35 years. He and his life partner and collaborator, John Timlin (b 1930), published ‘Art as Healing’, their book on his work and the Adamson Collection, in 1984. His importance in the complex history of British Art Therapy is widely accepted, though by the end of his career his point of view was seen as at odds with the evolving psycho-dynamic era in Art Therapy; and his practice, as personal to him. Adamson saw that people recovered - ‘healed’, in his terms- through the act of expressing themselves through art. The act of creating was all that mattered – how not to influence, distort or impinge on self-expression, the artist’s or therapist’s primary concern. He saw the space where he worked as an art studio, and himself an artist, “somewhere in between” the clinical staff and the patients . He encouraged 'free expression' by letting people come to paint or sculpt without comment or judgment by him. He abhorred psychological interpretation, which he dismissed as ‘the therapist’s own projections’ onto the work. Such views did not endear him to the emerging Art Therapy profession. His working style has been termed 'non-interventionist' by Hogan, and is not a practice that would probably be recognised as that of contemporary Art Therapy. Adamson, by keeping all the work done in his daily, progressive art studios over 35 years, collected an estimated 100,000 works - of which 6000 by over a hundred people survive as the Adamson Collection (at Lambeth Hospital in South London between 1997 and 2012; and currently almost all re-located to the Wellcome Library in anticipation of a securer future in several international institutions). He exhibited work from the Collection from 1947 on, and internationally until his death in 1996. Adamson believed the exhibiting of the Collection educated the public about the creativity and humanity of those with mental illness: "Adamson was an educator, who saw the socio-cultural intervention of showing these people’s works to the public who had excluded them - and showing it as an important contribution to their culture - as a way to change public opinion”. There is debate about whether work should be shown: questions about the creator's consent, confidentiality, capacity, and intention; and whether these works are always clinical records or can be outsider art.

Around the same time as Hill and Adamson, Margaret Naumburg, a psychologist in the U.S.A., also began to use the term “art therapy” to describe her work. Naumburg’s model of art therapy based its methods on:

“Releasing the unconscious by means of spontaneous art expression; it has its roots in the transference relation between patient and therapist and on the encouragement of free association. It is closely allied to psychoanalytic theory … Treatment depends on the development of the transference relation and on a continuous effort to obtain the patient’s own interpretation of his symbolic designs … The images produced are a form of communication between patient and therapist; they constitute symbolic speech.”

U.S. pioneers, Margaret Naumburg and Dr. Edith Kramer, started their art therapy at around the same time as Hill. In the late 1940s, Margaret Naumburg created “psychodynamic art therapy.”, whereas, Edith Kramer derived art therapy out of artistic practice.

According to New York University’s website, “Margaret Naumburg, an eminent pioneer in the field, offered courses and training seminars on the graduate level in New York University’s Department of Art and Art Professions. This tradition was continued when Edith Kramer came to the University in 1973 to develop a master’s program in Art Therapy. By 1976, the Master of Arts in Art Therapy program had obtained approval from the New York State Education Department, and in 1979, New York University’s Graduate Art Therapy program was one of the first of five programs to receive approval from the American Art Therapy Association.”

Dr. Edith Kramer, ATR-BC, HLM, was born in Vienna, Austria, where she studied art, drawing, sculpture and painting, during the Bauhaus movement. After arriving in the United States in 1938 as a refugee, she became a U.S. citizen in 1944 and continued to pursue the practice of art. Dr. Kramer was founder of the graduate program at New York University and Adjunct Professor of Art Therapy in the Graduate Art Therapy Program from 1973 to 2005. During that time, she was also Assistant Professor of the Graduate Art Therapy Program at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., from 1972 to 2000.

Edith Kramer received an honorary doctorate in 1996 from Norwich University in Northfield, VT. Currently, Dr. Kramer is Adjunct Associate Professor George Washington University where she teaches a Psychodynamic Processes course. She maintains a studio where she paints, etches, and sculpts and specializes in art therapy with children and adolescents. The American Art Therapy Association gave Dr. Kramer the award of "Honorary Life Member,” a mark of highest esteem.

Dr. Edith Kramer has authored seminal papers and books, and is renowned as a social realist painter, sculptor, print-maker and mosaicist. Edith Kramer’s starting point was art therapy work with children, which was documented among other groundbreaking literature, in the book, “Art as Therapy with Children.” She also wrote Art Therapy in a Children's Community.

In more recent history, Judith A. Rubin, Ph.D., ATR-BC, has been a groundbreaking author and film maker in the field of art therapy for decades. She is a licensed clinical psychologist, board certified Art Therapist, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, and a faculty member of the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Institute. Dr. Rubin received a B.A. in art from Wellesley, an M.Ed. from Harvard, and a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Rubin stands out through her work, which is in the tradition of Helen Landgarten, who also set forth the concept of clinical art therapy. Dr. Rubin’s work includes books, book chapters, films and journal articles on art therapy.

At Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the “(e)xpressive Therapies Program was established more than 30 years ago as one of the first graduate schools in the United States to train professionals in this emerging field,” according to the University’s website, Shaun McNiff, Norma Canner and Paolo J. Knill were involved in this program’s creation.

Dr. Shaun McNiff is an author and professor at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He left law school in 1969 to pursue painting and sculpture, then worked as the art therapist at Danvers State Hospital (a.k.a., the “State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers”), a residential treatment and care facility for the mentally ill, in Danvers, Massachusetts. In 1973-1974, he established the first graduate program there (then Lesley College) to integrate all of the arts in both therapy and education. The international profession of Expressive Arts Therapy grew from that work. Prof. McNiff recruited Norma Canner to work with him; she was known as a pioneer in dance therapy and for her work with children and youth with disabilities. Canner left Tufts University to work with McNiff at Lesley. McNiff also recruited the musician Paolo Knill from Switzerland, who had trained in physics and engineering. Prof. McNiff received a doctoral degree from the Union Institute and established a program in Advanced Graduate Studies in Creativity, Imagination, and Leadership at Lesley. He is a past president and Honorary Life Member of the American Art Therapy Association and is also on the faculty of the European Graduate School, Arts, Health and Society Division.

Paolo J. Knill, Ph.D., Dr. h.c., is Provost of the European Graduate School and Professor Emeritus at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Dr. Knill was born on July 11, 1932, in Switzerland and is a scientist, artist, therapist, educator and musician. Dr. Knill holds Master’s of Science in Aerodynamics and Structural Mechanics with a minor in Humanities and Applied Psychology from the Swiss Institute for Technology ETH Zurich. He studied Organizational Consulting and Management Consulting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), during which time, he was also a Research Fellow at the Aerospace Lab and an Adjunct Faculty for Music. He completed his certificate for Youth and Family Counseling in 1970, then completed his Ph.D. in Psychology at the Union Graduate School in Ohio in 1976.

According to the website of Mount Mary College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, “Mount Mary College has expanded its art therapy program to include a professional doctorate degree, announced President Eileen Schwalbach, Ph.D. Approval for the doctorate in art therapy was received April 25, 2011, from the North Central region's Higher Learning Commission (HLC). With an emphasis on professional competencies, the advanced degree program incorporates more than a traditional research degree and is the first of its kind in the U.S. It is also Mount Mary's first doctorate program.” The Doctorate of Art Therapy is a practitioner-oriented advanced degree that prepares already credentialed art therapists with competencies over and above those of master's level professionals.