Page 137 - ART FORM AND MENTAL HEALTH - Ingrid Pénzes

express their emotions so that these emotions did not overwhelm them were considered balanced. Clients were evaluated as more imbalanced if they were not able to experience or express their emotions. This could occur when these clients had a very high tendency for cognitive control or, in contrast, were easily overwhelmed by their emotions because of difficulties in regulating emotions. Therefore, imbalance could indicate ‘illness’. ‘Adaptability’ referred to the client’s potential ability to achieve balance. It consisted of self-management, openness, flexibility and creativity. Self- management referred to the ability to choose. This required the ability to distance and reflect upon oneself and the awareness of and paying attention to a present situation. Art therapists related self-management to self-determination, identity and autonomy. Flexibility referred to the client’s range of possibilities to react to given challenges, tasks, persons or situations. This required the ability to switch between cognitive control and allowing and expressing emotions. Therapists related flexibility to resiliency. Openness referred to an attitude that allowed taking in diverse and new perspectives. It involved curiosity, risk taking, not seeing mistakes as a disaster and daring to experiment with unfamiliar situations. Creativity referred to the possibility to differ from the known and go off beaten paths in order to create something novel. Art therapists related creativity to problem-solving.
In relation to the formal elements of the art product, art therapists considered the formal elements of the art product as an expression of a client’s mental state. They assumed that art products with clearly high or low ‘structures’ indicated that the client was more imbalanced. Very organized art products were related to imbalance towards ‘thought’. Very chaotic art products were related to imbalance towards ‘feeling’. Art products with ‘variation’ indicated adaptability because variation was associated with experimentation, exploration, play, taking risks and discovery.
Based on the observation of the formal elements that construed the structure and variation of the art product, art therapists in this study could formulate an art therapy diagnosis in terms of ‘balance’ and ‘adaptability’ and then determine the focus of treatment. The focus of treatment directed the choice of art interventions. In general, the art therapists estimated that clients with a lot of cognitive control (thought) might benefit from more ‘affective’ interventions, whereas clients with difficulties regulating their emotions might benefit from more ‘cognitive’ interventions.
These findings elicited the question whether it would be possible to
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