ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a case study taken from a short-term training group, which is aimed at introducing art therapy to people working with substance abuse. The group, which consists of 20 people, some staff and some residents of therapeutic communities in Italy and South America, had been working in pairs on life-sized portraits of each other. The chapter discusses one of the men was a priest and the other a worker in a closed community. Both came from South America and were training in Italy. It illustrates the power of the art therapy process and the necessity for clear boundaries and adequate time and space for processing the material which often arose. The participants, who were mainly psychiatrists and psychologists, were no longer under the illusion that art therapy was to be taken lightly, or that they could offer it to patients without having proper training themselves.
