Integrating the personal and theoretical splits in the struggle towards an identity as art therapist

As a sculptor, art therapist and teacher of art therapists both at beginning and advanced levels, I have struggled to find a theoretical position which integrates that verbal, objective psychologist part of myself with the nonverbal, symbolic artist. I have weighed the theoretical positions of thinkers in art therapy as well as in psychoanalytic, Gestalt, humanistic and Jungian schools. What has consistently stood out throughout my quest for meaning is the intimate interplay between my own personal inner development and my professional growth as an art therapist. This process has led me to believe that the splits within the field of art therapy that pit one approach against another are doing us all a disservice. Art therapy can be cast in many different frames depending upon any number of factors including the setting, population, length of treatment, depth and extensiveness of the therapist’s training, the therapist’s personality, as well as the receptivity of any given patient. I have come to feel that there must be room within our profession for individual quests for identity, differences in definition, and variance in approach if, as a professional group, we are to grow and be whole. I would like to share with you my own evolution as a creative arts therapist through the symbols, imagery, and theories that have marked my development. As for many other art therapists, symbol and image have become the inner codifications of my experiences. They defy the reductionism of words as they hold and mirror the complexity of my early attachments, link past to present, and point to my future. As organizer of my past, this world of symbol and image holds my polarities of hate and love, bad and good. If I am to share with you my struggle for meaning, I must talk in brief about my own personal symbols and how they have interfaced with my conflicts about art therapy theory. Please join me and picture, if you will, a dirty-faced kid who seems to be completely lost in his play in the sandbox. This was my world, where I built sand castles and deep tunnels immersed in the gooey texture of sand and water. Here, I defined and redefined my boundaries and found a retreat from a family that wanted too much conformity, too much neatness, and all too much order. The sandbox was a place where I was King, and where I was left alone to find my own pleasures. The other world was that of my sister. She was the star: an aesthetic, beautiful girl who won trophies, drew pretty pictures and was always very neat and put together. The pursuit after “the aesthetic” was an important shared commonality between my mother and sister. It was a realm from which I felt excluded, yet secretly envied. I dared not enter this world for I feared the competition and comparison. As I developed, I became rebellious. My play in the sandbox extended itself to many areas of my life. I became a dishevelled, disordered, often nonconforming young student who metaphorically plugged up drains and generally attempted to defy the existing order of things. In my young adult years, the dark, nonconforming part of myself found some outlet in creative work as a psychologist, but the aesthetic, the world that I saw as truly creative, was not mine. I could not draw or paint and, indeed, was often frightened when I entered an art room. At the same time I knew that if I wanted to find inner harmony I needed to bring together this dark,