ABSTRACT
There seems to be a paradox in writing about art therapy. Much of its essential healing power lies beyond words — experiencing is perhaps the best way of understanding. Art therapy can offer a way of exploring and expressing areas of ourselves that lie beyond the reach of words, and can create a bridge between inner and outer, towards greater integration of the two. In practice, the people best qualified to comment on the effectiveness of art therapy, and the only people who can really understand, are those who have directly experienced it. And as art therapy claims to be about psychic growth and in-depth long-term change, they cannot know it at the time; they can only really begin to know something afterwards.
