Adult Art Psychotherapy: Issues and Applications

Adult Art Psychotherapy illuminates the range of ever-expanding nature of art therapy as it completes its first two decades of formal existence. The editors suggest that clinical art therapy is capable of adapting to different theories and methods of therapy and that it is equally facile in responding to the diverse problems, opportunities and changes in adult life.

Helen B. Landgarten pioneered art psychotherapy on the west coast. In 1967, as a senior staff member of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in the Family/Child Department of Psychiatry, she introduced the arts therapy modality for diagnosis and treatment. In 1974 the position of Coordinator of Art Psychotherapy was designated for her and she still serves in that capacity to this day. Darcy Lubbers is in private practice in Berverly Hills, California, working with individuals with a wide variety of presenting problems. She has had extensive experience in the treatment of eating disorders, and as early as 1982, she instituted art therapy as part of a treatment program at the Woodview Calabasas Psychiatric Hospital, Los Angeles.