Art as Therapy

Edith Kramer is one of the pioneers in the field of art therapy, known and respected throughout the world. This collection of papers reflects her lifetime of work in this field, showing how her thoughts and practice have developed over the years. She considers a wide spectrum of issues, covering art, art therapy, society, ethology and clinical practice and placing art therapy in its social and historical context. Drawing on her very considerable personal experience as an art therapist, Kramer illustrates her conviction that art making is central to practice and cautions against making words primary and art secondary in art therapy. Art as Therapy offers a rare insight into the personal development of one of the world's leading art therapists and the development of art therapy as a profession. It will make fascinating reading for anyone interested in art therapy.

Vorwort
A collection of papers from Edith Kramer, addressing a wide spectrum of issues around therapeutic art

Autorentext
Edith Kramer was an artist and educator who taught and lectured all over the world. She practised art therapy with children who were suffering from a wide range of emotional disturbances in a variety of institutional settings. Edith was an adjunct professor at New York University in the graduate art therapy program, a lecturer at George Washington University, a painter and a sculptor.

Inhalt
Foreword, Lani Alaine Gerity. Part One: Introduction: Personal history as artist and art therapist. 1. Credo, as an artist and as art therapist. 2. A commencement address given in August 1996 with a history and lineage of art therapy as practised by Edith. 3. Art therapy and language, a revisiting of Orwell's `Politics and the English Language', but from the art therapist's point of view, how our depersonalising language may effect how we think about people. Part Two: The profession of art therapy. 4. Exploration of definition, Edith Kramer and Elinor Ulman. 5. The unity of process and product. 6. Art therapy and sublimination. 7. The art therapist's Third Hand. Part Three: Clinical work. 8. An art therapy evaluation session for children, Edith Kramer and Jill Schehr. 9. Leadership and tradition. 10. Case history of Angel. 11. Art and the blind child. 12. Case history of Christopher. 13. The importance of lines, Kersten Kupfermann with a discussion by Edith Kramer. Part Four: Art therapy, ethology and society. 14. Reflection on the evolution of human perception: Implications for the understanding of the visual arts and of the visual products of art therapy. 15. Art therapy and the seductive environment. 16. The etiology of human aggression. 17. Inner satisfaction. Part Five: Art and art therapy. 18. The angels of St Wolfgang. 19. A critique of Kurt Eisler's Leonardo da Vinci. 20. Reflections on The book of Alfred Cantor: An artist's journal of the Holocaust. References. Index.