Creative arts therapist: Jack of all trades or master of one?

Abstract

The subject contravening the generalist and the specialist is a sensitive one. I have had to deal with it most of my life, first in my training, then in publishing, exhibiting, performing and teaching in the fields of art, dance, drama, creative writing and education; and, finally, in the disciplines of the arts psychotherapy. To this day, I am continually having to prove myself to others offering opportunities and challenges in the fields of education and medicine. For this reason and because I head a multi-disciplinary national organization, I cannot afford to dissemble. What follows is my own personal perspective of the basic tenets, applications and problems besetting the creative arts therapist, and not necessarily that endorsed by any one discipline or organization, including my own. Is the creative arts therapist animal, vegetable or mineral, or, as Robert Browning once mused, “better left to God to understand”? It is not an idle question. The origins of the concept lie in the rituals of developing societies. Initially rituals, or similar forms of communal expression, were used to establish the essential bond, to reaffirm collective and individual identity, to celebrate seasonal benefits and attempt to influence forces which governed the society’s existence. Almost universally, ritual services included elements of art, music, mimicry, movement and drama. Fine arts, religion and medicine have their origins in such ritualistic practices. Often they were so interrelated as to be indistinguishable within a given society. For example, the Tarahumara Indian tribe of Mexico had only one word for dance and work; and missionaries in Africa found that the native word for worship and dance were one and the same. Yet such interrelatedness of arts, the community, and mental health was to disappear in Western societies, as these groups began to establish their formal structures. Progressively, the history of the creative arts and the individual became a study in separation and isolation. A skit, written by Gerry Beirne, called The Middle Voice, is a fine analogy of the current state of relationships between the fine arts, medicine, and the dominant psychotherapeutic disciplines as well as the creative arts therapies. The plot states that: