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Journal of Thai Traditional & Alternative Medicine Vol. 6 No. 3 September-December 2008
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Vol. 6 No. 3 September-December 2008
Special Article

Toward an Understanding of the Fundamental

Healing and Therapeutic Qualities of Art

Michael Franklin*
Taylor Siemon*

Abstract
This paper addresses questions of how and why art is therapeutic. Core principles from the art therapy
literature are cited as a way to clarify how art, which includes expressive engagement with processes, materi-
als, and products, can be a complete and primary therapy for people seeking to confront and relieve their
suffering. Special attention is devoted to Edith Kramer’s ideas on art as therapy and sublimation.
Key words: art as therapy, Edith Kramer

Introduction goals. As these goals are achieved, immediate feed-
One overarching question that drives the focus back is obtained from the process itself, reinforcing
of this paper is how does experimentation with art the fact that persistence yields desirable, even plea-
materials and art processes offer a continuum of thera- surable, results. Similar to the artistûs personality,
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peutic and healing outcomes for people across the Csikszentmihalyi addressed the autotelic persona-
developmental and cultural spectrum? There are many lity as one where there is complete reward in doing
reasons to consider which would help to explain these an act that initiates the flow experience. Addition-
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results. For example, according to Allen internal trans- ally, Csikszentmihalyi clarifies how happiness is re-
formation through art results by maintaining sustained lated to the capacity to absorb oneself in what one is
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efforts of immersion in charged emotional material, doing. The result of these sustained efforts over
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over time, which eventually becomes the subject time is an accumulation of inner resources that are
matter for completed works of art. It is this continued uniquely forged in the fires of creative work. For
immersion in the creative process that cultivates in- example, the art process teaches tolerance of ambi-
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ner resources known as ego strengths as well as the guity and management of frustrations as ideas are
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flow state. Csikszentmihalyi, as well as many art- considered over time, edited, and manifested into vari-
ists, describe flow as a condition of effortless engage- ous compositional possibilities. Through sustained
ment devoted to an outcome with specific, definable creative investigation, visual symbolic material is even-
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*Graduate Art Therapy Program, Naropa University, Denver, Colo- tually contained in honest unified compositions
rado, United States of America known as çformed expressioné that communicates

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