Art education and art therapy.

Here the subject of discussion is the difference between the art education and art therapy. So what aspects of these two professional activities can usually be subjected to a comparison? Do they have any common ground and if so what and why is this? These differences, if any, arise because of the environment in which they are practised? I mean to say, teacher works in schools with normal children and therapists are in hospitals with sick people. But there are possibilities and circumstances, where teachers work in hospitals and the therapists in schools. Would they be doing the same thing, if they change their title in such circumstances?

Let us try to answer all these questions one by one. Let us understand this first, in any school is there are children, who for a variety of reasons require some form of remedial activities or therapy. They may need the attention of specialist teachers and/or therapists. They require special treatment. The educational mode of art therapy has been to address itself to the needs of our teachers who wish to orient themselves as therapists. This has proved both exciting and difficult. While such trainings are conducted it becomes clear where the similarities and differences in practice actually lie between art teaching and art therapy. In Britain they follow a child-centred approach in art education which puts emphasis on the child's personal expression through art. We could also refer to child-centred as person-centred and say art therapy are not confined to children but also to an adult.

So in order to tackle the task of comparison it is necessary to look at the historical account of art education. . At the end of 19th century and the rise of colourful postimpressionist work shortly afterwards made it possible for the first time a comparison between child and adult art is this. This child art, primitive art, tribal art and Western Asiatic art were no longer regarded as crude but rather as sensitive and expressive forms of art.

Now, we see the teacher's attitude towards the child is changing. Instead of impressing upon the child pre-conceived ideas of his own relating to technical attainment and adult standards, now the teacher encourage him to express fearlessly his own creative and imaginative impulses. Efforts are made by some to release the subconscious mind by letting that child draw and paint patterns and colours which he sees in his mind's eye. It is believed that morbid fears and fancies are thus released. Art therapy stresses the spontaneous expression of the patient and assumes that there is a stage when the artwork reaches a primitive or preverbal level which is somehow culture and value free.

Interest in art of mentally disturbed was apparent at the turn of 19th century is under the same impetus as the interest in child's art. Jung, who was an artist himself, was a great influence on the art educator and philosopher Herbert Read, and truly had a strong influence on the movement in art education from child art. There is evidence that Jung had begun to use the artwork of his patients therapeutically before 1920 at his clinic in Zürich.