Art therapy and trauma, a different setting, a different approach

In 2002 someone sent me a newspaper clipping about a remarkable art studio in Tel Aviv, offering Israeli war veterans suffering from their battle traumas the opportunity to draw and paint and to sometimes exhibit their work to the public. In an interview one veteran related how much this place had come to mean to him, how it offered him and his fellow travellers a means to express pain, anxiety and hope, and to communicate about the invisible scars of their war experiences. The director of the studio emphasised how beneficial this endeavour proved to be for the people who frequented it. When asked if this project was about art therapy, however, the reaction was negative. Art therapy, the interviewer was told, is supposed to be about transference and insight and therefore something completely different (Rapp 2002).