Abstract:

Art therapy is a specific procedure of psychotherapy using various artistic languages (adopted from the visual arts, music, literature, dance etc.) as a relational substructure and analogy to all types of relationships experienced by the patient. Generally speaking, psychotherapy has three ways of conceiving art: 1) A psychoanalytical way; 2) A way that focuses on the creative act itself; 3) A cognitive way that focuses on personal creativity. Art therapy is performed efficiently in multi-disciplinary teams in which physicians, psychologists and art therapists co-operate in the rehabilitation and the social and professional re-integration of persons who have suffered somatic, mental or neuropsychiatric traumata, disorders of behaviour etc.Being a strategy based on personalization, art therapy has an original way of allowing patients to find their own ways of confronting and overcoming situations of crisis. The process and the artistic product act as an intellectual and affective stimulus, triggering resources of creativity and introspection in the patients that help them restructure their self-image and their relationships with the environment.

Keywords: art-therapy, psychotherapy, artistic language, creativity, artistic process