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This book is a must read for art therapists around the world. Whilst it is born of, and intrinsically related to, its context in the USA, the issues it raises are important for us all. The main message of the book is that art therapy needs to shift its focus away from treatments for individualised pathologies – deficit models, to practices that prioritise radical caring and social justice based on the recognition that social, political and cultural conditions shape our lives and are responsible for mental health problems disproportionately affecting the less advantaged., Art Therapy Online, Vol 10 No 2 (2019)

What stands out in the articles in this issue, for us, is the depth of thinking. Thinking is sorely needed at a time when neo-liberalist agendas push the art therapy profession further and further into a realm which favours simplistic methods and narrow goals, where the subversive, anarchic aspects of art, and the freedom involved in bringing ‘whatever’ into open-ended therapeutic relationships, is seen as a luxury of the past, even perhaps, as transgressive. There is a split between theory and practice involved here and we need to start thinking of theory making itself as a practice and to recognise that all that we say and do is inseparable from it, and is political. This understanding is behind the papers published in this issue., Art Therapy Online, Vol 10 No 1 (2019)

There is very little in Art Therapy that tackles the difficulties of working cross-culturally and with issues of race; in this respect this book is to be welcomed. It is a practical book rather than a theoretical one, and as such, is the first of its kind in this subject area that I know of. The author, Lorette Dye, clearly has a wealth of experience working with people who come from different cultural groups than her own, mainly in various countries in Africa, and in the USA, and the lessons she has learnt from this form the first section., Art Therapy Online, Vol 9 No 1 (2018)

The ‘Mr A’ of the exhibition title is, of course, Edward Adamson himself and taken from a picture done by Martin Birch in 1969 whilst he was a patient in Netherne Hospital where Adamson worked from 1946 to 1981. The exhibition comprises sixteen art works on paper, a number of painted flint stones, a series of ten projected images (all made in his studio) plus a short essay film ‘Abandoned Goods’ by Pia Borg and Edward Lawrenson, Fly Films 2014. The exhibition has been curated by Dr Heather Tilley (Birkbeck Wellcome Trust ISSF Fellow, Department of English and Humanities) and Dr Fiona Johnstone (Associate Research fellow, department of Art History), in association with Birkbeck’s Centre for Medical Humanities., Art Therapy Online, Vol 8 No 2 (2017)

We, the conference organisers, hoped the provision of an Art Therapy Large Group (ATLG) for the conference on each of the three days, would give delegates the opportunity to explore, through the use of art, performance and dialogue, their experiences of the conference and the dynamics that arise in a large group. We had run an ATLG at our first art therapy conference (Finding a voice, making your mark: defining art therapy for the 21st century) in 2013, and hoped there might be some continuity between the first and second ATLG, a development of the dialogue of word, performance and image through time.

This paper explores the public/private binary in art therapy. The public space is often associated with art being taken out of the art therapeutic space to be exhibited in galleries and sometimes sold, one of the aims being to promote art therapy practice and the plight of those who participate in it. Here it sits uncomfortably with the idea of art as commodity. The private space is associated with art therapeutic practice that is confidential and in which the art stays within the boundary of the therapy until therapy is finished. The emphasis is more commonly on process than product. However, art therapy sessions themselves have now also become commodities to be bought and sold. The paper argues that the public/private binary is operational in all art therapy practice whether or not the art leaves the therapeutic space. Art is a language that, by definition, can communicate without artist/patient to explain it or identifiable audience to view it. It exists between ‘self’ and ‘other’, but ‘self’ is infused with the public and social world and ‘other’ contains the projections of the self. The paper explores how these private/public dynamics can be harnessed, in an ethical way, to best serve our clients. Art therapy work from a group for victims of torture is used to illustrate the points. Keywords: Groups, Ethics, Refugees, Exhibition, Charities, Boundaries, Art Therapy Online, Vol 8 No 1 (2017): International Art Therapy Conference Proceedings

I can (truly) say that this book opens up new and exciting territory for art therapy, an invisible wall has at last been dismantled. It is a very brave book as well as a very scholarly book. Linnell introduces poststructuralist ideas, primarily from Foucault, Derrida and Butler, examines similarities and differences between two therapeutic practices, art therapy and narrative therapy with their convergent theoretical underpinnings, and in expressive detail, poetically explores her clinical practice in relation to the ideas. Top of the agenda are relations of power in a postcolonial context, in gender and race and between therapist and client., Art Therapy Online, Vol 3 No 1 (2012)

The organising committee of the INTERNATIONAL ART THERAPY CONFERENCE, Finding a voice, making your mark: Defining Art Therapy for the 21st century that took place at Goldsmiths, University of London on 8th-11th April 2013, are very pleased to be invited to present the Conference Proceedings in this issue of ATOL, Volume 5, Issue 1., Art Therapy Online, Vol 5 No 1 (2014): International Art Therapy Conference Proceedings

This paper discusses the politics and possibilities of linking the personal and\ud political with therapeutic and social transformation through a teaching method provided\ud in the art therapy training at Goldsmiths – the art therapy large group (ATLG). Three key\ud ideas of May ‘68 are related to the ATLG and their relevance to other psychotherapies and\ud psychotherapy trainings is considered. These ideas are: the importance of the ‘capitalist’\ud university as an essential terrain in the struggle for social change; the Atelier Populaire’s\ud use of art in an anti-capitalist critique of the commodifi cation of art and artist in society,\ud and the anti-imperialist character of the May events. These ideas are related to the theoretical\ud base of the ATLG in the large verbal group literature, Performance Art and to the\ud wide international membership of the ATLG, creating a forum for engaging with global\ud issues. To illustrate these points, we give an example of the interface of the political and\ud the impact of a real event – the university lecturers’ strike in 2006 – and the learning that\ud took place in relation to this through the ATLG. We conclude that through a critical engagement\ud with the university within the global terrain of contemporary neoliberalism, the ATLG\ud provides a territory that can integrate the political and therapeutic in arts / psychotherapy\ud trainings; provide a critique and alternative to the commodifi cation of art and artist and\ud engage with issues of difference in the globalized market place. The ATLG prepares the\ud artist / student / therapist / worker to critically engage in the personal and social transformation\ud of the politics of art and psychotherapy provision in the public, private and voluntary\ud sectors.

This paper is a response to two recent papers in The International Journal of Art Therapy, Inscape that set out positions in relation to art therapy theory. David Maclagan (2005) argues for the importance of ‘imagination’ in art therapy, and David Mann (2006) responds by defending a Freudian view of art therapy which he feels Maclagan has unfairly attacked on the grounds of it suppressing imagination. The view of this paper is that the arguments in both papers perpetuate the split in art therapy between an emphasis either on the art in art therapy or the therapy in art therapy, and in both cases this is because the authors neglect the significance of embodiment. An acceptance of ourselves as physical beings brings with it an awareness of context and of gender and therefore of political relations. The two papers are deconstructed to reveal that the suppression of the perceptual results in a perpetuation of the crystallisation of imagination rather than the releasing of it, which the authors are intending. The feminist philosopher and psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray’s writings are used to propose a new way in which we might think about the relationship between art and talk in art therapy.

Art has a rich history as an agent of protest. This chapter will consider how artworks, made in a therapeutic art studio, were radical acts of protest for the group. Some of these artworks were made in response to the partial closure of the service due to austerity driven funding cuts, and others to a sense of wider political and social injustice. In the chapter I examine the tension I felt as an art therapist, between an initial wish to protect and shield the group from knowing the truth about the financial pressures (a ‘protected space’), and a desire to go with the potential for empowerment that knowing the worst and becoming part of a joined-up community response, might provide. The studio became a ‘protested space’ in which art was an active agent. Viewed like this the art illuminates the hierarchical tensions within the therapy space during this time of crisis, where the more radical community-based ethos of the studio seemed under threat of erosion by powerful social, economic and political forces and felt difficult to maintain. The art can be seen as having meaning for the group in powerfully giving form to this ethos.

Esta investigación se inicia como una propuesta de intervención en arteterapia para poder comprender la subjetividad de las personas que sufren fi bromialgia, más allá de un diagnóstico clínico. Por un lado, el propósito es promover la creación de representaciones creativas desde la experiencia del dolor y recoger conocimientos narrativos para relacionarlos a través del método del arteterapia, con los paradigmas de los enfoques de las teorías feministas, la clínica psicosomática y del psicoanálisis, para construir estudios de casos con orientación teórica. Y por otro lado, ahondar en las vivencias, refl exiones y signifi cados, que las personas diagnosticadas atribuían a este síndrome y a otras esferas de su vida, a través de los diferentes lenguajes, verbales y no verbales. Se pretende con ello, contribuir a la creación de un cuerpo teórico en la disciplina del arteterapia validado. Con esta investigación se propone que las mujeres que han participado, puedan apropiarse de estos lenguajes para generar, a través de un proceso creador, un espacio desde donde poder reelaborar el dolor de una manera diferente al lugar “fi jado” por la sintomatología y por las atribuciones culturales asignadas al género femenino. Para ello, se recoge información cualitativa y atributos cuantitativos de la vivencia de estas personas. El eje central de este trabajo se focaliza en el proceso, en la cualidad de las narraciones y en las experiencias de las mujeres que se comprometieron a “permitirse” un espacio en sus vidas para el autoconocimiento y la autoexpresión a través del proceso creador., This research began as a proposal to introduce art therapy invention as a means of understanding the subjective realm of persons suff ering from fi bromyalgia, reaching beyond the clinical diagnosis. On one hand the intention was to provoke the creation of creative representations from the experiences of the pain and collect narrative knowledge using art therapy to relate them to the paradigms of the approaches of feminist theories, psychosomatic medicine and psychoanalysis. And on the other hand — through languages, verbal and non-verbal— deepen the understanding of the vital experiences, refl ections and signifi cance that persons diagnosed with fi bromyalgia might attribute to the syndrome or to other areas of their lives. The aspiration is to, through this work, contribute to the creation of a theory proven within the art therapy discipline. This research propound for the participating women to adopt such languages to generate, through a creative process, a space where they may work to transform the pain involved, diff erent from the one “settled” by the symptomatology and the culture attributes assigned to the female gender. The study gathers qualitative information as well as quantitative attributes regarding the life experience of these persons. The central focus of the work is on the process, on the quality of narrative or alternative expression of experiences by women and men who suff er from fi bromyalgia and “allow” themselves some room for self-knowledge and selfexpression through the creative process., Tesis Univ. Granada., Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Arte

Esta investigación se inicia como una propuesta de intervención en arteterapia para poder comprender la subjetividad de las personas que sufren fi bromialgia, más allá de un diagnóstico clínico. Por un lado, el propósito es promover la creación de representaciones creativas desde la experiencia del dolor y recoger conocimientos narrativos para relacionarlos a través del método del arteterapia, con los paradigmas de los enfoques de las teorías feministas, la clínica psicosomática y del psicoanálisis, para construir estudios de casos con orientación teórica. Y por otro lado, ahondar en las vivencias, refl exiones y signifi cados, que las personas diagnosticadas atribuían a este síndrome y a otras esferas de su vida, a través de los diferentes lenguajes, verbales y no verbales. Se pretende con ello, contribuir a la creación de un cuerpo teórico en la disciplina del arteterapia validado. Con esta investigación se propone que las mujeres que han participado, puedan apropiarse de estos lenguajes para generar, a través de un proceso creador, un espacio desde donde poder reelaborar el dolor de una manera diferente al lugar “fi jado” por la sintomatología y por las atribuciones culturales asignadas al género femenino. Para ello, se recoge información cualitativa y atributos cuantitativos de la vivencia de estas personas. El eje central de este trabajo se focaliza en el proceso, en la cualidad de las narraciones y en las experiencias de las mujeres que se comprometieron a “permitirse” un espacio en sus vidas para el autoconocimiento y la autoexpresión a través del proceso creador., This research began as a proposal to introduce art therapy invention as a means of understanding the subjective realm of persons suff ering from fi bromyalgia, reaching beyond the clinical diagnosis. On one hand the intention was to provoke the creation of creative representations from the experiences of the pain and collect narrative knowledge using art therapy to relate them to the paradigms of the approaches of feminist theories, psychosomatic medicine and psychoanalysis. And on the other hand — through languages, verbal and non-verbal— deepen the understanding of the vital experiences, refl ections and signifi cance that persons diagnosed with fi bromyalgia might attribute to the syndrome or to other areas of their lives. The aspiration is to, through this work, contribute to the creation of a theory proven within the art therapy discipline. This research propound for the participating women to adopt such languages to generate, through a creative process, a space where they may work to transform the pain involved, diff erent from the one “settled” by the symptomatology and the culture attributes assigned to the female gender. The study gathers qualitative information as well as quantitative attributes regarding the life experience of these persons. The central focus of the work is on the process, on the quality of narrative or alternative expression of experiences by women and men who suff er from fi bromyalgia and “allow” themselves some room for self-knowledge and selfexpression through the creative process., Tesis Univ. Granada., Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Arte