Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Rita Simon, a founder member of the art therapy profession, focuses on the complex interplay between content and style in patients' work, arguing that it is style that reflects the habitual mood or attitude of the unconscious.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Art therapy literature needs solid, precise explanations of just why and how art is therapeutic. Precise writing and clarity of expression give didactic strength to Simon's theory that style as distinct from content reveals clients' current attitudes toward their life-experiences at any given moment. She demonstrates how style and stylistic change can be analyzed in the physical markings of the art process (i.e., color, line quality, space relations, etc.) and be recognized for unique and traceable symbolic meanings. The meanings, however, cannot be verbalized as easily as content can, so special awareness is needed. Her 50 years of impressive experience as art therapist and practicing professional artist give Simon an exceptional authority of practical and theoretical dimensions upon which to build her theory of ^D["a circle of styles^D]", eight styles that she contends emerge in the spontaneous art of small children through adults of all ages and levels of art training. Through convincing case studies, she offers concrete strategies for developing genuine creative expression during the various cycles. Art therapists will become more aware of the therapeutic effects of the art process as they observe its development in styles shown and observe how the process itself moves the client into greater psychological focus and integration. Simon clarifies the position that the therapy happens when the art happens in art therapy. She brings together many classical searchings of the question and concisely defines how the very process of creating art becomes the actual vehicle of pyschological integration, the vehicle for interior reorientation of the ego to self-esteem. Art therapy educators will appreciate the practical dimensions of this approach.