ABSTRACT
When considering the objects of the constitution and the ways in which BAAT was setting about achieving them during the late 1960s and early 1970s, it appears that there were some contradictions between the object of being incorporated into the state system of health and education services yet at the same time having the (unstated) object of retaining that aspect of art therapy which appeared to challenge ‘traditional’ attitudes in medicine and psychiatry. These contradictions produced conflicts within BAAT and the art therapy movement as a whole. Such contradictions were also faced by community artists and Owen Kelly in Community, Art and the State: Storming the Citadels makes the following observations, which seem relevant to the issue under discussion:
What I am saying is that, regardless of the motivations and abilities of individuals working within them, at an institutional level the health service and the educational system are agencies of the centralised state and can be seen to behave as such. Thus doctors, whatever their personal beliefs, are obliged, by interlocking systems of legal rules and social expectations, to license illness.… teachers are obliged to license access to job opportunities and career structures through the licensing of certificates and diplomas.
(Kelly 1984: 73)