Professional art-psychotherapy training programs have been growing larger and faster than was the case several years ago. However, professionals in the field are still few and far between, especially practitioners with a concentration in the dementia and AD geriatric population (Elmar, Jens, and Johannes, 2003). Furthermore, the interdisciplinary combination of art-psychotherapy and many different fields of expertise is a relatively new concept. The methods through which the healing benefits of art-psychotherapy with an emphasis on multi-sensory stimulation can be examined and measured are documented through the research and evidence in this study.
The importance as well as the practicality of using art-psychotherapy with DAD patients can easily be documented. For instance, one of the early successes in the field was an art therapy program administered in 2001 at Oaks Alzheimer’s and Dementia Care Center in Petaluma, CA, and sponsored by the San Francisco Mental Health Board. As the administrator of that institution describes, some 80 percent of their patients arrive heavily medicated and with behavioral problems. “We get 90 percent reduction in drugs as a result of this art therapy program” (www.artheals.org, 2001).
Art Therapy
The connection between art and mental health was first recognized in the late 1800s (Rubin, 2001). However, art therapy as a therapeutic technique did not solidify its existence until the 1940’s when many artists working in psychiatric hospitals became aware that painting, drawing and other forms of artwork could form the basis of a therapeutic relationship between a patient and a therapist (Rubin, 2001).
In the 1940’s, art therapy helped in reconciling emotional conflicts as well as in promoting self-awareness and personal growth (Ballou, 1995). The founders of the art therapy movement were considered to be Margaret Naumburg (1928) and Edith Kramer (2001). Naumburg believed that art had symbolic qualities that came from the subconscious (Naumburg, 1928) and this was the best way to utilize art therapy. In this way, the art therapist uses art as therapy. The therapist can use art as a window into the subconscious of the patient, and from there can attempt to figure out the underlying problems from which the patient may be suffering. Another school of thought, art in therapy, founded by Kramer, believes that art therapy is a way of integrating conflicts on an aesthetic plane so as to bring the id, ego and superego into balance (Kramer, 1971). Kramer emphasized the healing qualities of art making and was also concerned with artistic quality. Freud also suggested that art acted on and reverberated therapeutically available anxiety rather than resolved it (Irving, 1993). Throughout the nineteen-thirties, forties, and fifties, other traditional psychoanalysts described the use of art in conjunction with therapy (Naumburg, 1928).
In 1922, a book entitled Artistry of the Mentally Ill (Prinzhorn) aroused interest in the subject and caused the medical community to examine the diagnostic value of patients’ creations. In 1958, an artist named Hana Kwiatkowska translated her knowledge as an artist into the field of family work and introduced techniques of evaluation and treatment using art therapy at the National Institute of Mental Health (www.cancer.org). As Naumburg’s work developed in 1914, she continually attributed less importance to the experience of patients in the creative process and coined the phrase “art as therapy” (Ulman in Rubin, 1987, p. 280). According to Rubin (1987), Ulman was the “originator of one of the earliest and most widely used theories of art therapy.” Ulman (1975) was quite influenced by both schools of art therapy thought – art as therapy and art in therapy. Furthermore, Lyddiatt (1972) blended art as therapy and Jungian art therapy. Lyddiatt was influenced by Jung’s perceptions on a technique, “active imagination and saw her role as a facilitator and one who ‘stayed around’” (p.1). Lyddiatt’s approach was to provide the sanctuary and art materials where the person in conflict could go about her own healing process and find her right way (Irving, 1993).
Dalley (1983) also tells us Jung believed that: “Art represents a new synthesis between the inner and subjective world of the artist and external reality. The artist selects, often unconsciously, material from both external and internal reality. The work embodies a conjunction between the two, and this integration gives a sense of reconciliation and resolution” (p. 9).
Janie Rhyne (1984) in Gestalt Art Experience describes the psychotherapeutic use of art as “Gestalt art experience” and often uses that phrase rather than “Gestalt art therapy” to describe her work. According to Corey (1982), Gestalt art therapists encourage clients to “carry out their own therapy as much as possible” (p.98). The emphasis is on experience and awareness in moving through to closure of unfinished business. Like Gestalt therapy, Gestalt art experiences are often practiced in groups, and the mutual support and sharing in the group process is seen as a vital part of the closure and completeness. However, Shaun McNiff (1989) tried to not over-analyze the production of art itself. McNiff suggests instead that we place art in a context which it has historically often served, as an artifact that embraces the human search for sacred meaning and a spiritual order. To express the purpose of art, McNiff coins the term “ensoulment,” meaning to make manifest the soul. He suggests taking art away from the fortification of science and acknowledging its role today where it has served humanity for millennia, as “a manifestation of primary religious instincts” (p. 20).
As was discovered by the researcher from her own experience as a practitioner, the dementia population express themselves not only by means of art work, but also through the use of multi-sensory stimulation consisting of unified sensory stimulation, color therapy, sand therapy, and play therapy, which are still incubating in many disciplines at present. The next sections of this introduction outline the key notions from each sensory stimulation subject to ultimately create the unique art therapy compositions that make up the structure of the AMSS study.
