Emerging in England and the United States after the devastation of World War II, the artistic and psychoanalytic communities came together to investigate the benefits of art for treating people with mental disorders and trauma. Being able to use them from two perspectives:

 

• Art as therapy: where art operates as a creative and therapeutic process in itself in which the therapist acts as a facilitator of creative expression to promote biopsychosocial well-being and personal growth.

• Art in therapy: in which artistic creations function as a facilitator of verbal expression, consciousness, and the construction of a link between the internal and external world, with specific psychotherapeutic frameworks.

 

According to the Spanish Federation of Associations and Art Therapy (FEAPA), art therapy is the process of creation that, using artistic language, deepens a psychotherapeutic process through a therapeutic relationship, whose objective is personal and social training, expressive and creative development, elaboration and subjective change of position.

 

Although there are currently several Institutions and definitions, the interconnection lies in the use of the artistic expression, the creative process, and creativity as a tool in the therapeutic process to promote biopsychosocial well-being.