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Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to propose a dynamic approach in interpreting patients' artwork based on the concept of "Visual Thinking" advocated by Rudolph Arnheim (1969). In exploring both aesthetic and psychological properties, inseparable and inherent in art, I will focus on the following points: (a) the different approaches in interpreting images, (b) the role of intuition in viewing art, (c) the dynamic quality inherent in art, (d) the semantic implication of art, and (e) the role of language in interpreting art. These points will be later expanded and substantiated by Arnheim's (1966) asthetic theory.
Current Trend of Viewing Images in Art Therapy
Historically, the field of art therapy has been struggling to assert its professional identity because of the duality in its roots, psychology and art, and due to its lack of a unique and independent theoretical framework. Today, the majority of art therapists work in clinical settings where practitioners such as psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and nurses are their colleagues, and thus function in a manner similar to their colleagues by using the language of their colleagues. Consequently, many art therapists focus on diagnosis of the patients, often functioning as the primary evaluator. This trend in art therapy practice also reflects the educational goals of many art therapy training programs in the United States, which emphasize educating students to develop diagnostic skills based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). An increasing number of art therapists advocate highly structured art therapy assessment procedures that resemble the techniques used by psychologists, thus sacrificing the creative and artistic components.
A current trend in the field of art therapy seems to diminish the value of intuitive response to visual images as nonscientific, and advocates a quantitative approach and its use in interpretation of patients' artwork (Cohen, Mills, & Kijak, 1994; Gantt & Tabone, 1997). The process can be detrimental, however, when art therapists themselves attempt to fit the art part of art therapy into such a static framework. These methods focus on the interpretation of patient artwork by the reductive method of equating specific psychiatric diagnoses with particular images without explaining the connection between the complex psychodynamics and the contextual relationship within the...