Art Therapy for Reform of Delinquents.

The article presents the experiences of a British experimenter on behavior therapy in prisons. When the author was a military prisoner in North Africa in 1942, he spent a couple of hours each day drawing and afterwards he always felt relief from boredom. Besides, the activity gave him an incentive to study the camp surroundings from a painter's point of view. He spent a lot of time standing and watching the shapes of his fellow prisoners as their outlined figures merged subtly against the walls of the huts. He used to memorize their attitudes, the bend of their necks, the way their arms were stuck into their trouser pockets and their backs huddled in the cold. Later he worked out these impressions on large sheets of paper. This serious creative work gave him a definite aim and its therapeutic effect was, he thinks, very great. On his return from the prison camps he found himself wondering what went on inside the civilian jails and whether the strengthening escape through creative work, which he had found, was also being discovered by the inmates of his Majesty's prisons.