ABSTRACT
The art therapists concerned, Katherine Killick and Helen Greenwood, both developed interests in working with people diagnosed as having psychotic illnesses. Greenwood’s research focused on a description of a community-based art therapy group set up for people with longterm psychotic illnesses. The subject of Greenwood’s research was an out-patient art therapy group for people with longterm psychotic illnesses. Intensity of the transference is reduced, changing the difficult feelings that arise in treatment of formidable psychotic anxieties into a manageable stream so that the relationship is not destroyed by them. A hypothesis concerning the use of humour in art therapy groups for people with psychotic illnesses can be clearly formulated and subjected to scientific testing in some future research. Killick’s academic research explored a way of thinking which could enable the therapist to attend consistently to the containing principles at work in each of the fields of communication which she defined.
