Summary of Art Psychotherapy

Art psychotherapy makes use of art materials to encourage and enable the description of thoughts and feelings that may feel impossible to describe with words alone.


Sometimes events are too painful to recall let alone speak about, but they may be what’s holding us back. Finding words, speaking them can be too difficult a challenge initially. Art psychotherapists, being artists themselves, are skilled in the use of a range of art materials and will be able to support you in the use of them. There is an element of play and experiment in the use of art materials. This will at times tap into unconscious processes which provides opportunity for previously unknown aspects of ourselves to surface, be met and held.

Its quite common for people to worry about not being ‘good at art’. There’s no need. There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Art psychotherapy is more about the process you go through whilst making images and artefacts, what you notice, how it feels, what meaning images and artefacts come to have for you. The product, what you are left with, is an important result of that journey but its making is not the aim. This is what makes art psychotherapy different to producing works of art. Having said that clients do make items that have significance and meaning, may be beautiful and that they keep and treasure. Equally getting rid of what is no longer needed nor wanted is part of the healing too.

What’s great about making art is that items can be returned to later in the therapy and this enables you to reflect on your journey from then to now and see how you have travelled.

Reflection through art materials can be about bringing day to day problems, or longer term issues that have become entrenched and are holding you back. Sometimes we will explore dreams and use images from them to gain deeper understanding.

What makes Art psychotherapy different to the purely talking therapies is its use of the symbolic language found in making art.