Art therapy is about healing and about understanding art, she said. An arts and psychology major from Lehman College, she got involved with the therapy after she started working for a peer-counseling group and had to interact with emotionally disturbed children. Slowly, Farber started drawing the story out of the girl. I realized that the girl was given no chance to mourn her brother's loss. Her parents, in trying to protect her, had removed all evidence of her brother's existence from the house.
Art therapy is two-pronged.
The first is open-ended therapy where the patient is required to let out his emotions and feelings through any form of art and the therapist reads into it and accordingly treats the patient. It is now practiced in mental health, rehabilitation, medical, educational and forensic institutions. The concept of art and treatment started in the 1930s when psychiatrists became interested in the art work done by patients and studied it to see if there was a link between the art and the illness of their patients. It was only in 1969 that the American Art Therapy Association was formed with 100 members. Art therapy has moved beyond the borders of America and has several associations in Europe and Korea, Farber said.