Home
What is Art Therapy?
Upcoming Offerings
Women's Retreats
Individual Therapy
Ongoing Group Art Therapy
Professional Development Classes
Contact Me
Directions
Related Links
Art Therapy Atlanta
Individual, Group, Couples Art Therapy in Atlanta/Decatur
with Virginia DuPre
Licensed Professional Counselor & Registered Art Therapist
What is Art Therapy?
Art therapy engages clients in creating images and reflecting on images for the sake of insight, growth, and healing. The artmaking that takes place in art therapy is process oriented rather than product oriented. In other words, the artmaking is not always about making something beautiful.
Absolutely no artmaking experience is needed to participate in art therapy.
The practice of using image making and image reflection in the counseling process is based on the beliefs that image and color is the language of the unconscious and that image processing uses the right side of the brain. Because image making accesses the unconscious and uses the right side of the brain, while talking uses the left side of the brain, art therapy accesses feelings and experiences that often cannot be accessed through the use of words.
Since art therapy taps resources we do not usually access without conscious effort, it is a great therapy for anyone looking for deeper growth and insight. It is also a very helpful therapy for people who have difficulty in accessing feelings, for people who have experienced trauma, and for those who are 'blocked' in verbal therapy. It has also worked very well for some as a complement to verbal therapy.
Created images are understood to be images of the client's psyche, thus giving client and therapist a “picture” of what is being worked with in the therapy process. As clients work with images that emerge in artmaking, as well as in their dreams, they are expanding the conscious mind and, as Jungians call it, journeying toward wholeness.