Jack Bulger

2/16/17
Pd. 4
Word Count: 1889

Sculpture and Psychology

How art and mental health go hand in hand

The glaze on the colorful sculptures gleams as sunlight hits them from the open windows.

Sketchbooks and pads of paper litter the tables, their pages full of drawings. An easel stands in

the corner, displaying an unfinished painting. Dr. Wendy Miller surveys her studio, searching for

the right artwork. She picks up a sheet of paper that has what appears to be a flame, beautifully

drawn with bright oranges, deep reds, and unusual traces of blue. The picture was made by a

client who suffers from an eating disorder, explains Miller. She says the flame is the way that her

client is best able to express her illness. Dr. Miller walks back to her chair, and sits down in the

corner of what is not only her art studio, but also her office, where she conducts therapy sessions

with her clients.

The American Art Therapy Association (AATA) defines art therapy as ...the use of art creation

as a form of psychotherapy for people experiencing trauma or illness, seeking personal

development, or struggling to deal with the day-to-day act of living. While modern art therapy

has only been around since the 1940s, art has existed for as long as humans have been on this

Earth. Cave drawings have been found in Spain that date back about 40,000 years to the

Aurignacian period, the earliest time period of the modern man. By the mid-20th century,

medical and mental health facilities began to use art therapy as a form of treatment after

discovering its ability to benefit the mental health of patients with psychological issues. After so

many years of artistry, humans have gathered a plethora of art styles to aid therapists in their

work, be it drawing, painting, or sculpture, among a vast assortment of others.

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As a certified art therapist, Miller uses a wide array of art techniques to treat her clients,

who might have come to deal with one of many different issues. My clients come to me to work

on things like anxiety, depression, the divorce of their parents, or trauma of some sort, or if they

have a mental illness, among other things, she says.

While traditional psychotherapy is a more familiar option for people with mental health

issues, it is not always the perfect solution for some. According to art therapist Tamara Galinsky,

art therapy can be more effective than talk therapy in some cases, because the creative expression

that art allows goes underneath the word.

Sometimes, the person might literally not have the words to talk about what theyre

feeling, explains Galinsky, but the creative side of the brain is still working, and able to

express how they feel and why theyre feeling that way.

Like Galinsky, noted art therapist Natalie Rogers has an acute understanding of the

differences between traditional therapy and art therapy. Using expressive arts becomes a

healing process as well as a new language that speaks to both client and therapist. She discusses

the essence of art therapy, explaining the differences between the types of therapy that exist.

Verbal therapy focuses on emotional disturbances and inappropriate behavior. The expressive

arts move the client into the world of emotions and add a further dimension. Incorporating the

arts into psychotherapy offers the client a way to use the free-spirited parts of herself, she

explains.

Traditional psychotherapy, for all its successes with many mental health patients, is

sometimes simply not the best mode of communication for some patients. Traditionally,

psychotherapy is a verbal form of therapy, and the verbal process will always be important.
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However, I find I can rapidly understand the world of the client when she expresses herself

through images. Color, form, and symbols are languages that speak from the unconscious and

have particular meanings for each individual. As I listen to a clients explanation of her imagery,

I poignantly see the world as she views it.

Art therapist Dr. Elaine Goldberg elaborates on this idea, saying that art can be a

comfortable alternative to just talking to a therapist about a patients problems. Creating art can

be more enjoyable, and less threatening, says Goldberg.

Dr. Millers career in art therapy is partly thanks to her past experiences. After a tragic

accident on a ski trip, eleven-year-old Miller was hastily wheeled into the hospital of her small

hometown in Maine. After examining her broken leg, the doctors at the small Maine hospital

concluded that at the hands of their expertise, Millers leg would have to be two inches shorter

for the rest of her life. Millers parents, refusing to accept such a fate for their daughter, raced to

Boston Childrens Hospital, where the more skilled and competent doctors were able to properly

set the broken bones and allow them to heal.

During the number of weeks that Miller was confined to the hospital, an activity person

began to bring her to an art studio, for something to pass the time. During this time period, Miller

fashioned a sculpture out of clay, of a bowl of fruits and vegetables.

Dr. Miller reaches over to a nearby table, and picks up the sculpture she made in the

hospital after that ill-fated ski trip. As she points out the little details of the artwork, it is clear

that it was created with meticulous consideration and a lot of small, detailed work. Each piece of

the sculpture is intricately shaped and marked, and the colors are carefully organized and shaded.
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Miller attributes a large part of her successful recovery to the activity person and the sculpture

she made.

I felt like the orthopedist saved my leg, remembers Miller, but the activity person

saved my soul, and I wanted to be her when I grew up.

Tamara Galinsky came to be an art therapist in a different way. She had always loved art,

and since she also wanted to help people, she began to use it in a therapeutic way. As an

important component of her training, Galinsky became an art therapy client. This allowed her to

understand the therapy process from the clients standpoint, and to help create her own practice.

As a client, it was valuable to see how others do things, in terms of structuring how I might do

things based on what I saw, she says. Although she has been involved in art therapy for five

years, she didnt expect to be so powerfully affected while in the role of the client.

Dr. Goldberg describes the variety of problems that art therapy attempts to help the

patient deal with. She says that many times, the issues are relatively routine, such as depression,

anxiety, or poor self-esteem, amid a wide scope of other maladies. Another issue a patient might

have is with self control. Many people have problems with self control, they either have too

much, or not enough, says Goldberg, Art therapy helps people develop a better sense of being

able to control something in their art.

After a series of successful art therapy sessions, however long it takes for the mental

issues to be treated, the patient is changed in a positive way. As Galinsky puts it, The issues in

life that the client came to the art therapist to deal with would be going better.
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Dr. Goldberg explains more about the subject, saying that after successful art therapy, the

patient becomes more relaxed, and less stressed. Goldberg goes on to say that the patient might

also feel better about themselves, or take more of an interest in creative activities as a result of

therapy.

Art therapist Natalie Rogers explains how her clients are affected by their therapy.

Clients report that the expressive arts have helped them go beyond their problems to

envisioning themselves taking action in the world constructively, she says.

The focus of the field has changed over the years. When I graduated from college in

1972, the field was very focused in physiological psychology, says Miller. While modern art

therapy is more concerned with how the patient thinks, or how to work through mental problems

with the therapist, physiological psychology is more focused on the biological science of the

patients behavior. Though the field is less focused on this aspect of therapy, it still exists as an

important factor of the patients treatment, since the right hemisphere of the brain is the side

involved with creativity and art, which are the tools with which art therapists help their patients.

Coming out of college, Miller was more interested in the art and creativity of art therapy,

rather than the therapeutic, medical side of the field. As she became more interested, she became

involved in the movement that brought the two sides together; the art and the therapy.

After studying art in college, Miller had to figure out what she wanted to do. She knew

something artistic would suit her well, but she wasnt quite sure what. After some thought, she

became an artist in residence, living with older people who had lived in mental institutions in the
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past. When Miller made art with the people she stayed with, it gave them an opportunity to

share images and stories from their lives, says Miller. Though the people she stayed with had a

history of mental illness, they had experiences and relationships just like those of a person of

good mental health. It was while she was working with them, that Miller saw how therapeutic it

was for them to make art with her. Helping people in this way, combined with her love for art,

Miller realized, was what she wanted to do, instead of just being an artist or a therapist. Shortly

after leaving the artist-in-residence program, she became an art therapist.

In her 25-year career as an art therapist, Dr. Wendy Miller has accumulated an extensive

amount of education and certifications, and has educated and conducted therapy with countless

groups of people. After all this time, she remembers why she became an art therapist in the first

place: She wanted to help people, the way she thought mattered most.

In her studio, Dr. Miller produces a set of two crayon sketches. These were done by one

of her clients. The first one depicts a small girl at the bottom of the page, seemingly cowering in

fear. The rest of the page is full of lines that point right to the girl, surrounding her completely.

Dr. Miller explains that each one of the lines is a separate problem or pressure that the

client perceives in her life. The second sketch shows the same girl, but this time she is standing

up, confident and unafraid, with the many lines that are her fears gathered in each hand. I asked

the client to draw what it would look like to have conquered her fears, says Miller. The drawing

is an important reminder to the client, that her fears and anxieties are manageable.

Even though it isnt the right fit for every patient with a mental disorder or illness, art

therapy can be extremely beneficial. An art therapist cant take the illness away or change the
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circumstances. They dont always know what is right. However, she explains, having the

opportunity to explore yourself in a safe space changes you, and makes you more in tune with

yourself. It helps you understand what your problems are, and how to deal with them, she says.