ABSTRACT
This is an integrative model in that it brings together a number of theoretical ideas into one mode of practice. Group-interactive art therapy has aspects and vocabulary imported from psychoanalytic and analytic art therapy; it incorporates ideas from systems theory. In particular, it draws on ‘interactive’ or ‘interpersonal group psychotherapy’, which in-turn uses an uneasy amalgam of psychoanalysis, social psychology and existential philosophy. There is an interesting tension inherent between these conceptualisations of humanity (quite different in psychoanalytic theory, analytic psychology, social psychology and existential philosophy) and the differing explanatory frameworks for psychopathology.
