Page 60 - ART FORM AND MENTAL HEALTH - Ingrid Pénzes

very conscious and thoughtful of what they were making; were often precise with perfectionistic focusing on the final result of the art product and had difficulty recognizing, experiencing and expressing emotions or tried to avoid them.
Clients who showed an affective style of material interaction could easily became overwhelmed by emotions, had difficulties in regulating emotions and structuring their impulses and might had difficulties with regard to boundaries.
According to the participants, the clients’ style of material interaction indicated the way they organized their lives. Most often they seemed to be stuck in a certain way of doing this. As art therapy assessment focuses on doing and experiencing, rather than thinking, it provides information about the client’s flexibility to explore and change their emotional and behavioural palette. Because the style of material interaction reflected the way clients organized their life, observing this style enabled the art therapist to decide whether to offer further art therapy or not, to formulate treatment goals and to choose art materials with properties that met the treatment goals. Results of our previous study of Pénzes et al. (2104) and this focus group study indicated that material interaction could provide valuable information in art therapy assessment and that material interaction was reflected by formal elements of the art product. However, it is not clear which elements reflect which categories of material interaction and which information about the client this provides. Therefore, we conduct a third study to examine the relationship between the formal elements of art products, material interaction and clients’ characteristics more precisely.
STUDY 3
The aim of the third study is to verify the assumption of a relationship between the formal elements of the art product, material interaction and the client’s psychological characteristics. This relationship could mean that the art product is a valuable source in art therapy assessment.
Method
Participants
Four art therapists from different backgrounds were included in a small
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