ABSTRACT
Although most art therapists agree that assessment is a necessary element in the therapeutic process, there is some disagreement about how to carry it out appropriately (Gantt, 2004; Wadeson, 2002). Established assessment procedures are at the heart of evidenced-based treatment strategies in any health care practice, including art therapy (Gilroy, 2006). Art-based assessment grew out of psychological testing, specifically projective drawings, which originated as intuitively based-not evidenced-based-techniques . Art therapy inherited difficulties with these drawing tests, such as a lack of substantiation for sound psychometric properties, as well as problems inherent in theoretical approaches (Betts, 2006; Gantt, 2004; Kaplan, 2003). Psychologists using drawings for assessment purposes had removed drawings from their context in art. Typical projective drawing tasks such as the House-Tree-Person, Draw-A-Person, and Kinetic Family Drawing require clients to depict specific subject matter on 8½-by-11-inch paper with a pencil (Buck, 1970; Burns & Kaufman, 1972; Hammer, 1997). Scoring systems formulated by psychologists focused on precise indicators in projective drawings, trying to match specific graphic signs with psychiatric symptoms or disorders (Betts, 2006; Gantt, 2004).
