ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the subject of truth and its relation to art therapy against the backdrop of historical, political, philosophical and artistic ideas on truth, and in light of a debate in psychoanalysis, if anything can be known beyond the moment of the therapeutic relationship.
Looking at retrospective and collaborative single case research, the chapter explores the client's and therapist's changing binary conceptions of “true” or “false” from three temporal perspectives: in therapy, post-therapy, and revisiting the material many years later. Though “moments of truth” occurred at all three stages, their understanding changed considerably over time. It is proposed that art making, with its open and ambiguous nature, allows for a slow and mutable assimilation to the client's and therapist's changing ideas of what was “true” and thus facilitates a continuous critical investigation of something essentially elusive.
