Disadvantages Of Art Therapy

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Trauma, as defined by the American Psychological Association, is an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape or natural disaster. In order to process and overcome a traumatic experience, most seek a therapist. This is especially true for individuals who have dealt with childhood sexual abuse. There are different types of therapy and therapists that exist that individuals go to. Art therapy is a kind of psychotherapy that uses art as it’s main technique of communications in order to improve the emotional and mental well being of the patients. It combines the areas of human development, visual art such as drawing, sculpture, painting and other kinds of art and the artistic process with counseling and psychotherapy. …show more content…

In a paper conducted by Howard in 2017 it states “To use art, counselors need to learn how to integrate art therapeutically into counseling. In using art, they need to emphasize process over product and clarify the potential benefits to the student. It has been suggested that art therapy fits nicely into the American School Counselor Association’s national standards.” (Howard, 2017).
One of the disadvantages of art therapy is that the therapist is more vulnerable to misinterpretation in terms of the objective understanding of content. Care must be taken not to make rapid interpretations on the specific piece of art which might prevent or even deny the client the satisfaction of discovering and finding out for herself (Case and Dalley, p. 65). This is because art therapy involves a lot of interpretation, it is understandable that critics about this technique are similar to that of psychotherapy. The client’s images can come across as many things with contrasting ideas, but only the individual themself can explain it. The therapist is urged not to point out obvious red signals, instead they should allow the client to come up with their own interpretations. Their own interpretations alone are something to make note of as it may shed some light on the client's thought process about the

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