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According to the American Art Therapy Association, Inc., Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, along with several other psychiatric individuals at the time, had a big hand in the development of art therapy. It was thought that these early practitioners had similar insights entering into the development of art therapy in addition to the budding fields of psychiatry, along with their new ideas on the application of conflict resolution. The healing and learning that was derived from the "talk therapy" these men eventually became known for, were thought to have built a base for uncovering the unconscious levels of the mind. But many feel that it was Carl Jung's ideas on art therapy that seemed to be the method upon which today's art therapy received its early roots.

Carl Jung has been recognized as a major player for his major influence on art therapy, also recognized as one of the younger colleagues of the famous Austrian psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud, known as the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology. Freud became internationally recognized for his groundbreaking theories regarding the conscious vs. unconscious parts of the mind. Jung felt that even though Freud made the goal of this new psychiatry field the unconscious conscious, Jung felt that Freud made the entire therapy field sound as if it were an unpleasant "cauldron of seething desires."

One of the tools Carl Jung used for his patients to express their unconscious feelings was the field of art, developing his version of the Jung art therapy. Influenced by both psychology and psychiatry, Jung's influence was based on his devotion to the psychological meaning that was inside of each art piece. Freud himself never had his patients do their own artwork, but Carl Jung more than encouraged it, in addition to interpreting their dreams. "To paint what we see before us, " Jung wrote, "is a different art from painting what we see within."

Totally rejecting Freud's theories, Jung expanded the field of psychoanalysis on a dee[ personal level. The ideas behind the Jung art therapy included artwork of all levels, the interaction of mythology and its influence on the present moment, and the thoughts of native people which included the round spiritual mandala and the Sanskrit. Many felt he had more common sense than Freud, as the he felt the individual's psyche had more than one interacting systems. One of these was the ego which was the main ideas behind Freud's new theories, but Carl Jung dismissed Freud's superego and id, feeling that the ego alone was considered a personal unconscious state of the mind in addition to the fundamental collective unconscious one.

With much more of an optimistic view of the true inner meaning of art than did Freud, Carl Jung felt that psychological art originated within the psyche and was intelligible to the general mass. But even more, over the years he discovered that another style called visionary art drew on the collective unconscious, yet was a lot deeper and with less of an individual nature. This sort of art consisted of images-images that appeared in dreams and through the art form. This type of art was more spontaneous and was considered to be more of a fulfilling image. He considered these images as metaphors, holding the troubled individual's separate worlds together which were previously troubled worlds of trauma and chaos.

Learn more about this author, Nancy L. Young-Houser.
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