Art as therapy

Domain VIII · Creative & expressive arts therapies · Edith Kramer · 1950 · Esopus, New York, USA

What it is

Art as therapy is an approach to art therapy, not a manualised protocol. Kramer (Vienna 1916 to Grundlsee, Austria, 2014) studied painting with Friedl Dicker, a Bauhaus-linked teacher. In New York her work with children at the Little Red School House was first called "art therapy". From 1949 she…

Format

• No staged protocol. No published fixed phase model, session count or criteria for moving between phases exists for this approach. Kramer's own clinical structure, as reported, is listed below. The phase scaffold after it is a built from her concepts, not her own model.
• Setting. Ongoing art studio sessions, individual and group, inside residential, school, hospital-ward or other therapeutic milieus (Art as Therapy with Children has a chapter titled "Art, art therapy, and the therapeutic milieu"). Session length and frequency are not specified.

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Professional frame. Art as therapy is practised by trained art therapists. US: graduate-level art therapy training, the American Art Therapy Association (AATA), state licensure where it exists (state list:; check the relevant state board), and the Art Therapy Credentials Board (ATCB) credentials: ATR-P (provisional, graduate education done or in progress, practising under an approved supervisor), ATR (graduate art…
• Version followed: Edith Kramer's "art as therapy" approach, as set out in Art Therapy in a Children's Community (1958), Art as Therapy with Children (1971; Schocken 1972 printing, 1974 edition cited by some authors), Childhood and Art Therapy (1979), "The art therapist's third hand" (1986) and Art as Therapy: Collected Papers (2000/2001, ed. with foreword by Lani Gerity). No publicly available text of Kramer's books…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Is there physical contact? Was it explained beforehand, and do you feel free to say no or stop at any point?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Does it involve intense or unusual breathing? Have you been told about the medical conditions for which that is not advised?
• Does it involve fasting, a special diet or 'detox'? Have you discussed this with your doctor?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• Dependency. Fade your support over time.
• Tools going missing, horseplay, an agitated client.
• Your aesthetic preferences shaping what you help clients make.
• Comparison and shaming between members, and splitting within staff teams.
• Your image overriding the clients' own images, and the timing of the intimacy it invites.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.