What is Art Therapy? Who defines the profession?
Art Therapy is a new and ancient profession: it is new in the world of Western Psychology; its roots are ancient, evolving from the world of our indigenous ancestors who understood that they could not survive without accessing their imaginations within sacred art-fully crafted rituals and ceremonies. These ancestors also learned that their health and vitality depended on their maintaining a right relationship with all the peoples animal, vegetable, mineral, the elements in their environment: they used the arts to acknowledge and honor these relationships. This making-special activity (Dissanayake, 1992) through the arts is our heritage. This heritage belongs to all of us: it belongs to all ages, to all cultures. In our contemporary world, there is a calling for art-making to redress the enormous sufferings of becoming separated from our connections with each other and with our environment.
