Thinking systems — Seeing systems: An integrative model for systemically oriented art therapy

Abstract

Although family art therapy has been practiced in various areas of the United States since 1962, there is still a paucity of written or theoretical information on the approach. In 1974, Gantt and Schmal identified 16 American journal articles and 5 foreign journal articles on family art therapy written between 1940 and 1973. Nine publications on family art therapy in mental health between 1973 and 1979 were identified by Moore (1981). Kwiatkowska (1962), the first known art therapist to conduct family art therapy, focused on her research using diagnostic techniques and therapeutic interventions. Additional early art therapists who wrote about their clinical work and/or research with families include Keyes (1974/1983), Levick (1973a,b), Mueller (1968), Rubin (1974), Sherr and Hicks (1973), Wadeson (1972, 1973), Wadeson and Fitzgerald (1971), and Zierer, Stemberg, Finn, and Farmer (1975). Art therapy with mothers and daughters was first identified in writings by Dewdney and Dewdney (1970), followed by Landgarten (1975) and Rubin (1978). In the 198Os, Landgarten (1981, 1987), strongly supporting family art therapy, described her diagnostic techniques and case studies, as did Riley (1985, 1988) and Sobol (1982). It appears, however, that a theoretical approach to family art therapy has never been clearly established. Neither Lusebrink (1990) nor Rubin (1987) included it in their recent publications identifying approaches to art therapy. The purpose of this paper is to present a theoretical model for family art therapy that integrates historical, interactional, and existential perspectives of family therapy and art therapy. This integrative approach combines both verbal and expressive modalities, allowing the clinician to not only “think systems” but to “see systems” (Arrington, 1989). In order to facilitate the reader’s thinking and seeing systems, an art-based assessment of a client and his family using a systemically oriented art therapy approach in a traditional art therapy placement is included.