The Role Of The Art Therapist

Art therapy regards painting,music,dance,drama and sandplay as the therapeutic medium and it is also an interpersonal process of interaction which aims at helping the parties to resolve the psychological problems and promoting life adjustment and personality healthy.Unlike traditional talking therapy,the most important feature of art therapy which made the parties' subconscious content emerged in the form of image through the nonverbal ways of artistic creation.Therapists analyze the parties' images,help the parties to discover the causes of psychological problems and psychological barriers,discuss the changes of strategies,promote the psychological development of the parties and make the parties perfect and understand themselves better and better.The art therapist is a key element in art therapy.Compared with traditional psychotherapy,with the addition of art media and art work,the interactions between therapists and parties won't mainly dominated by the way of speeches but by the nonverbal way of art.This requires that therapists can evaluate the parties' psychological problems in artistic way in the process of art therapy and use appropriate art media and artistic creation to intervene the parties' psychological problems.Therefore,the role of art therapists will gain more connotations.Through carding the related research of predecessors on art therapy,the author found that the domestic researches are mainly concentrated on theoretical introduction(theoretical orientation,mechanism of action,current situation,concept definition,etc)and applied research(includes the application on school psychological consultation,school teaching,medical institutions,special children and special groups,etc).Art therapists can be regarded as a key element in the treatment,for the research of countertransference,the analysis of the works and professional qualification authentication,etc.,only to a point.Therefore,this paper takes art therapists as research objects.Based on the comprehension of the role of art therapists and the historical evolution,the author puts the therapists in the process of art therapy and combine the characteristics in different artistic forms todescribe and expound the therapists systematically.The paper can be divided into four chapters.Art therapist is the research object of this paper.The first chapter will make a clear theory discussion through the definition of art therapy and analysis of the role of therapists and historical evolution.The implementation of the art therapy requires a process.In different stages of treatment,the roles or tasks of therapists will also be different.The second chapter mainly analyzes the changes of roles in the three different stages as the initial building of therapeutic relationship,the implementation of treatment,the end of therapeutic relationship and puts the therapist in the process of the therapeutic relationship.According to different forms of art in the therapeutic process,art therapy can be divided into music therapy,art therapy,sandplay therapy,drama therapy,dance therapy and so on.Accordingly,the role of therapists will be different in the therapy of different forms.The third chapter will specifically analyze the differences of various therapists on the aspect of skill,techniques and specific operation.The nature of the art therapy determines that the therapists need not only the necessary artistic abilities but also can change their roles as artist or art teacher at any time in the process of treatment.The fourth chapter will make a contrastive analysis between artists and art teachers by means of the comparison among therapeutic artistic creation,artistic creation,artistic psychotherapy and art education and hope that the therapists can change their roles freely according to the needs of treatment in the process of therapeutic process.