"Art Therapy" Plastic Expression - Symbolism

In the last few years the psychotherapeutic practices are increasing spectacularly. Each one of them claims to have the big answer to the human pain both bodily and mental.
One of them is the "Art Therapy", which has a significant place in the USA and Europe. In the center of this therapeutic approach lies the emphasis, which it attributes to the patient, as an active factor for his/her own cure. Art Therapy, requires the human being to be a "creator". The person projects a part of his/her psychism through designs, sculptures, drawings and embroidery that are created spontaneously. This manifestation bears a therapeutic value of its own, regardless of the fact that later experts in the fields realized and supported that the creations of the patients have a close relation with their inner conflicts.
We realized then the importance of the "Art Therapy" in the field of mental health mainly. People who suffer from a mental illness find the creation of some kind of work of art as a salvation, in their effort not to lose contact with reality. But even experts in the field (psychiatrists - nurses) understand and appreciate this "alternative" way of communication and the particular aesthetic power and dynamics that it develops.
In the present research there is an attempt to approach the "Art therapy", there is a particular reference to the plastic expression, as a cure and the role of symbolic expression.

Keywords: art therapy, alternative therapy, plastic expression, symbolism