Did You Know That the History of Art Therapy Is Even Older Than Human History?

Art as a method of therapy

Art has been, and continues to be, a treatment method used by people for centuries to heal mental and physical ailments. Many different cultures have recognized that creative activity helps people feel better. Throughout history, painting, storytelling, dance, drama and music have formed part of life as healing rituals. In this article, we will discuss how this healing tool, now scientifically called art therapy, has evolved and reached the present day.

Since prehistoric and primitive communities, every known society in the world has engaged in artistic activities involving temples, homes, painting, sculpture and weaving. In ancient Greece, medicine and art were considered inseparable. Healing was believed to be psychological as well as physical, and achievable through art. In Apollo’s kingdom, science and art were described as an integrated part of life indispensable to human health. Many contemporary sources also place great importance on considering physical and psychological needs together as a whole.

“Art therapy” may seem like a new approach, but studies of how music, painting, dance and theater help heal unwanted negative emotions and make people feel better were conducted long ago. For example, some traditional ceremonies in Zambia are intended for treatment. Traditional musical instruments such as drums are played during these ceremonies. It has been supported that the excitement felt by a patient dancing to the rhythm and melody, their physical movement and changing heart rhythm regulate heart pressure, or blood pressure, and make a difference in the nervous system, bringing marked relaxation and making patients feel better.

Treatment through music is one of the oldest methods of art therapy. As well as benefiting people’s emotions, it has been used to help develop social relationships, confidence and health. Music therapy has been used for approximately two thousand five hundred years. This field extends from Africa, America, Asia and Europe, and the musical healing practices of ancient Turks and Ottoman Turks, to the present day.

Visual arts—painting, sculpture, mandalas, masks and so on—have been used throughout humanity’s existence to meet needs such as expression, language, religious rituals, beliefs, beauty and defense. Cave paintings in Spain known to be 64.800 years old date to approximately 20.000 years before modern humans migrated from Africa to Europe; they were therefore made by Neanderthals. Advanced technological analyses of the Spanish cave paintings show that they were made at least 64.800 years ago. This provides some of the strongest evidence that art is older than previously thought, that Neanderthals possessed the capacity for symbolic expression underlying human culture, and that art is fundamentally a natural practice arising from within people.

The foundations of modern visual art therapy lie in thousands of years of symbolic expression and creative activity, while some derive from psychoanalysis. It has theoretical foundations and methods based on the psychoanalysis Freud established in the 1900s. Different forms of emotional expression, such as art therapy, dance, poetry and psychodrama, began to be explored as alternatives to speech, the usual mode of communication in therapy. During art therapy, the fundamental idea and aim is to convey emotions through shapes and colors.

Art therapy has been used in clinics for more than a century and recognized as a profession since 1991, but its practice has only recently begun in our country. In recent years, however, systematic and controlled studies have demonstrated art’s healing effects, benefits and significant contributions to recovery, and its use has begun to spread.