Post modernism and its impact on art therapy

Abstract

Postmodern movement emerged in the 1960s as a reaction against modernism, the most important differences which distinguished it from previous periods were its attitude to the reality and critical attitude towards the certainty of science and truth. In this view, reality differs for individuals and is determined by the perception, culture and language. In this view, each person's perception of reality is the product of his attitude to the life, so the existence of an absolute reality is rejected. Postmodern culture does not represent a systematic and pervasive theory because every individual or culture measures reality in its own way; so they can be understood by their own criteria, not by a standard and objective one. People also use language to construct their inner realities, so each person's words and manner of speech reflect the internalized realities and their perceptions of reality. Based on what has been said, deconstruction can be considered one of the most important postmodern manifestations that has influenced not only on aesthetics discourses but also in the sciences such as psychology in the last three decades of the twentieth century. This approach seeks to eliminate and abolish universal principles and emphasizes diversity, plurality, differences, contradiction and relativity. Accordingly, postmodern psychotherapy also came under the influence of postmodern philosophy. Social constructivism is a postmodern view of therapy that believes reality is not outside to be found; it is built within each of us and socially constructed through the interaction of culture, perception, and language. So everyone is personally and actively involved in making his own reality. The purpose of this paper is to study and investigate the impact of the features proposed in postmodernism on postmodern art therapy in an analytical and theoretical way. The main question is to find in what extent postmodern art therapy is related to the concepts in postmodernism. In this study, it is assumed that the concepts discussed in postmodern philosophy are specifically applied to the postmodern art therapy. The results of this study confirm that the deconstruction of social structures and internalized narratives, the importance of multiple realities, the importance of social aspect of art, group and discourse-based activities, pluralism, the importance of audience interpretation, the use of metaphor and etchings as well as the use of different medias in creation of artworks are among the most important features that have been introduced and applied in postmodern art therapy. Postmodern art therapy began as a means of combating social conditions, with the idea that individuals are influenced not only by their childhood experiences in the family, but also by culture, ethnic, race, gender, politic and other issues in the life. In this context, art was used as a means of expressing multiple realities to establish mutual discourses and communication as well as identifying and eliminating the dominant narratives of life. In this way according to post modern art therapy all people have the ability to lead their own lives in ways that are both satisfying and socially productive.