ABSTRACT
The last chapter looked at the relationship between the client and therapist in the arts therapies by focusing on the frameworks and traditions of therapy. This chapter looks at the role of the arts therapist in different ways, in order to try to see more fully what an arts therapist is and does. It will explore, for example, the ways that the arts therapist brings the function and role of the artist to the therapeutic encounter. It’s worth noting that many trainings throughout the world emphasise that, prior to entry, the arts therapist must have a qualification, or extensive experience, in an art form, and also that the trainings themselves include a substantial amount of experiential work in the art form. Once qualified, professional organisations often require that the therapist continues to engage in their art form as an artist. Looked at in one way, this contrasts with the statement often made by arts therapists to clients, and often written about in arts therapies literature, that the client need not have prior experience in the art form to benefit from the arts therapy. It might be possible to say that this creates a divide between the trained, artistically literate arts therapist, and the client who may never have painted or danced before. This might be seen to create tensions or difficulties in the relationship, where the therapist becomes strongly identified by the client with the expertise and mastery of the arts arena of the therapy. As we shall see, though these issues can be present, the reality is often more complex than this.
