Art therapy
Art therapy from the Latin ars - art and from the Greek therapeia meaning treatment, restoration. Its simplest definition is a therapeutic effect using the resources of art. It is an activity on the borderline of art and psychotherapy, where art is the creative act and the resulting artefacts, and therapy is following the process of change in relation to the artwork. It should be noted that in art therapy creation is the most important element, unlike in psychotherapy where drawing is sometimes used as a supplementary element. Visual creation opens the way to communication between the inner self and the external world, following Malraux: " Art is the shortest way from man to man".The pioneers of modern psychotherapy, Freud and Jung, undoubtedly contributed to the development of modern art therapy; in their view, visual creation, can be a form of expression of conscious and unconscious content. Different approaches based on theoretical concepts are used in art therapy practice: psychoanalytic, humanistic, cognitive-behavioural, narrative and solution-focused, developmental, expressive and multimodal.
Our art therapy is inspired by existential therapy in the logotherapeutic stream of V. Frankel. We use multimodal expressive techniques: visualisation, art activities, body work.
Through art therapy we can often experience more deeply our experiences and emotions, language often proves too poor to express and describe them.
Here are some of the benefits of art therapy:
- increased self-esteem, self-confidence, autonomy, uniqueness, integrated personality
- feeling the full joy of life again
- release of energy, more creativity
- better communication with others
- feeling of freedom, breaking out of the prison of the past, "I had no choice".
- loss of fear of the gaze of others and of external evaluation
- the courage to live life to the full, despite difficulties and imperfections
