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CHOICE Review

This collection of essays extends, from a variety of perspectives, the role of artwork within the process of art therapy. Definitions and analyses are clearly developed on how created images can become objects of transference and countertransference in therapeutic relationships, and how images are integral to object-relations theories and the processes of individuation, symbolization, and separation. Artists, in particular, among therapists will feel satisfied that the healing quality of the creative process is at last centered upon the production of images (artworks) within the total art therapy process. Too often, because of an effort to emphasize therapeutic aspects in definitions of art therapy, the role and import of the image created is misrepresented as minimal beyond its diagnostic indicators or beyond its value as an externalized spontaneous and nonverbal expression of self. The concerns of this group of authors call attention to the significance of the artworks themselves as bearing a direct role on effective treatment. To support their views, the authors demonstrate how current insights about the extended meaningfulness of the image can be compatible with traditional psychotherapy theories. A survey of the art therapy profession (in Great Britain but applicable to the US scene) points up the importance today of training in the arts as essential to the practice of art therapy. A major contribution to the professional literature of art therapy.-J.L. Leahy, Marygrove College