Why Make Images in Psychotherapy?

One of the most common questions about Art Psychotherapy is whether artistic ability is required. The answer is no. Yet the question leads towards something more fundamental: why might making an image have a place in psychotherapy at all?

Human beings have made images for thousands of years, giving visible form to experiences that could not be contained by ordinary explanation alone.

Within psychotherapy, an image may arise before a person knows exactly what they think or feel. Something difficult to grasp can begin to appear through colour, gesture, shape, texture, or the physical encounter with a material.

At times, image-making accompanies conversation. At others, it may temporarily take the place of words. What has been made can remain present within the therapy, available to be encountered, reflected upon, or left without immediate explanation.

What lies beyond language

Words are central to most psychotherapy, including Art Psychotherapy. Yet experience does not always arrive in a form that can be clearly described.

A person may know something without yet being able to think about it directly. It may be carried through bodily feeling, mood, recurring relationships, dreams, behaviour, or a persistent sense that something is present but cannot quite be grasped. Psychoanalytic writers have described forms of experience that are known in some way before they can become consciously thought.

Image-making can make this less articulated knowledge more available. A tension, memory, atmosphere, or emotional state may appear through a mark or arrangement before the person understands what has been expressed. Something that was previously diffuse can become more available to awareness.

This does not mean that an image simply reveals a hidden truth waiting to be decoded. What emerges may remain uncertain, partial, or contradictory. Its significance can develop through the experience of making, the therapeutic relationship, and the associations that gather around it over time.

New words may eventually become possible. At other moments, the image itself may carry something that does not need to be translated immediately into speech.

Image-making as an ancient human activity

Images entered human life long before they entered the consulting room.

Across cultures and historical periods, people have made images in caves, temples, homes, manuscripts, burial places, and sacred sites. They have created forms through which the visible and invisible, human and divine, living and ancestral might be brought into relation.

The purposes of these images have varied enormously. They cannot be reduced to a single psychological explanation, nor should ancient or sacred practices be treated merely as early versions of modern therapy. Their existence does, however, remind us that image-making belongs to a deep human capacity.

We make images to remember, orientate, invoke, mourn, imagine, honour, and encounter what cannot be held through literal description alone. The modern therapeutic use of images exists within this much older human history.

An image made in psychotherapy may be modest, uncertain, or apparently ordinary. It does not need to feel sacred or profound. Yet the act of giving form to experience participates in something ancient: the movement between inner life, material reality, and the world of shared perception.

Psyche and image

From a depth-psychological perspective, an image is not simply a picture of something already understood. It may be one of the primary ways psychological life becomes present.

Jungian and post-Jungian traditions have often approached psyche as inherently imaginal. Dreams, fantasies, memories, and spontaneous images do not merely decorate conscious thought. They may be forms through which experience first becomes available to us.

To say that psyche is image does not mean that everything psychological is a visual picture. An image may appear as an atmosphere, bodily impression, dream fragment, remembered place, imagined figure, or recurring pattern charged with feeling. Its importance lies partly in its capacity to make something present without reducing it to a definition.

Language can develop around an image, but language does not always come first. A person may encounter a colour, form, figure, or scene before knowing why it matters. Conscious understanding may emerge gradually from sustained attention to what has appeared.

This is one reason images can be so valuable in psychotherapy. They allow us to meet experience before it has been organised into a familiar explanation.

Giving experience a form

An internal experience can sometimes feel overwhelming or difficult to approach because it has no clear boundary. It may seem to be everywhere and nowhere at once.

Making something external does not remove the experience, but it can alter the relationship to it. A mark, shape, arrangement, or image gives it a perceptible form outside immediate inner experience.

This may create a little distance without requiring emotional detachment. The person remains connected with what has been expressed while also becoming able to observe it. At other times, making brings something closer. An emotion that has remained remote or abstract may become more immediate through contact with colour and material.

What first appeared simple may reveal several different qualities, while something described as empty may acquire a particular atmosphere, texture, or weight.

The image does not need to represent the experience perfectly. Its value lies in creating a form through which a relationship with that experience can begin.

Images can hold more than one meaning

An image does not always say one thing. A dark shape may evoke fear, shelter, concealment, depth, protection, or several of these at once. A figure may appear vulnerable from one perspective and powerful from another. An apparently peaceful landscape may also carry loneliness, distance, or longing.

This capacity to hold several meanings is important in psychotherapy. Human experience is often contradictory, and a rapid explanation can reduce something before it has been sufficiently encountered. The meaning of an image may change as therapy develops. Different associations can arise, forgotten memories may return, or the person’s relationship with the original experience may shift.

The therapist may offer observations, questions, or associations, but does not possess a fixed interpretation that reveals what the image truly means. Meaning develops through the person’s relationship with what has been made, the therapeutic conversation, and the wider circumstances of their life.

Remaining with uncertainty can be difficult. It may nevertheless allow something more complex to emerge than an immediate answer would make possible.

The spiritual and numinous dimensions of images

For some people, an image may carry a spiritual or numinous quality. Something appears that feels larger than personal intention, charged with significance, or difficult to explain through biography alone.

This does not mean that the image must be understood as a message from elsewhere, nor that psychological and spiritual meanings have to be separated into competing explanations. Personal history, emotional experience, cultural meaning, imagination, and spirituality may all be present together.

It does not need to separate psychological, spiritual, symbolic, and material meanings too quickly.

Some images may evoke wonder, reverence, dread, mystery, or a sense of contact with something beyond the ordinary personality. Others may feel quiet, mundane, resistant, or empty. The therapist’s task is not to prescribe significance, but to help create conditions in which the person can discover how the image belongs to their experience.

This openness is particularly important when spirituality forms a meaningful part of someone’s life. Images can provide a way of approaching such experience without reducing it either to pathology or to an unquestioned metaphysical certainty.

The importance of materials

Image-making is not only about what remains at the end. The encounter with materials can itself become meaningful.

Different materials invite different forms of engagement. Pencil may allow control and precision. Paint can spread, mix, resist, or move beyond an intended boundary. Clay requires pressure and direct physical contact. Collage involves selecting, cutting, arranging, concealing, and bringing separate fragments together.

A person may feel drawn towards a particular material or strongly avoid it. They may work carefully, press forcefully, repeatedly erase, cover part of an image, or struggle to begin. These responses do not need to be judged as correct or incorrect.

The way someone meets the materials may offer possibilities for reflection. The process may bring experiences of uncertainty, control, risk, mess, choice, limitation, and error into view. These are not conclusions for the therapist to impose. They can be noticed together where they feel relevant.

An accident may also become important. A spill, tear, unwanted mark, or unexpected mixture can evoke frustration, relief, curiosity, or a wish to abandon the work. Therapy allows such moments to be encountered rather than immediately corrected.

The image within the therapeutic relationship

When an image is made in therapy, it enters the relationship between therapist and client.

Something may appear that has not yet been said directly. The image can also change the structure of the encounter. Therapist and client may turn together towards what has emerged rather than meeting only through face-to-face conversation.

This is sometimes described as a triangular relationship between client, therapist, and image. The image is not a neutral object, but neither is it simply an illustration of something already known. It can become a third presence in the session, carrying meanings and emotional qualities that neither person entirely controls.

The client may wonder what the therapist thinks, whether the image will be judged, or whether something private has become visible. The therapist’s response therefore matters. Curiosity, restraint, and respect are essential.

I do not assess an image artistically or decide what it means on the client’s behalf. We may consider what it was like to make, what draws attention, what feelings arise when looking at it, and whether anything has shifted through giving it form.

The person who made the image remains central to its meaning, although that meaning may not be immediately available even to them.

Do you need to be good at art?

You do not need artistic training, confidence, or technical ability to use art materials in psychotherapy.

This can be difficult to believe because art is often associated with evaluation. Many people learned early that some children were “good at art” while others were not. Art-making may have become connected with comparison, embarrassment, or the fear of producing something childish or inadequate.

Those expectations can enter therapy. You may worry that you will not know what to do, that the image will look unclear, or that the therapist will form a judgement about you from what appears. Such concerns do not exclude you from Art Psychotherapy. They can themselves become part of the work.

A simple mark, a colour, a roughly drawn shape, or the arrangement of several pieces of paper may be sufficient. An image does not need to resemble anything recognisable. It may remain unfinished, be altered repeatedly, or consist largely of empty space.

Its value does not depend upon artistic success. What matters is the experience of making and what becomes possible through encountering what has appeared.

What if I feel self-conscious?

Self-consciousness is common, particularly when using materials with another person present.

Making an image can feel exposing because something appears before it has been fully controlled or explained. You may become aware of the therapist watching, even when they are quietly attending rather than evaluating. You may also feel uncertain about what the image reveals.

These reactions deserve respect. There is no requirement to force yourself to make images before you feel ready. They may also offer an opportunity to explore how it feels to be seen. Concerns about judgement, failure, performance, privacy, or disappointing another person can emerge vividly around the act of making. Similar expectations may be active elsewhere in life, although this should not be assumed in advance.

Over time, the materials and the therapist’s presence may become more familiar. Self-consciousness may soften, change form, or become something that can be spoken about directly.

What if I already make art?

Artists and other experienced makers can bring a different set of concerns into Art Psychotherapy.

A sustained creative practice may make materials feel familiar, but it can also make working without evaluation more difficult. The person may automatically compose, refine, edit, or move towards an established visual language. They can be highly aware of quality, originality, and how an image would appear to others.

An image made in therapy does not need to belong to the person’s wider artistic practice. It can remain private, unresolved, technically awkward, or unlike anything they would ordinarily produce.

At times, an artist may prefer not to use materials at all. They may want therapy to offer a different kind of space, away from the demands already attached to artistic work. Art materials remain optional in my work, including when the client is an artist.

Existing artwork can also enter the conversation where this feels meaningful, although it is not treated as a diagnostic object or interpreted without the artist’s participation.

Do images have to be interpreted?

People sometimes imagine that an Art Psychotherapist will examine an image and identify its hidden meaning.

My approach is collaborative and exploratory. I may notice a feature, ask about an association, or wonder aloud about something that appears. The client may agree, disagree, feel uncertain, or find that the observation opens another line of thought.

No symbol has a single universal meaning that can simply be applied. The significance of a colour, figure, landscape, or object depends partly upon personal history, emotional context, cultural associations, and what was happening during the process of making.

An interpretation offered too quickly can close the image down. It may replace the person’s developing relationship with the image with the therapist’s preferred explanation.

The aim is not to solve the image, but to remain attentive to what it evokes and how its meanings may change.

Is image-making always part of Art Psychotherapy?

Art Psychotherapy does not require making art in every session.

Some people use materials frequently. Others work mainly through conversation and make images only occasionally. A client may use them during one period of therapy and later find that they are no longer needed. Another person may never make an image at all.

In sessions with me, there is no expectation that you should use materials simply because I am trained as an Art Psychotherapist. The choice can be considered as part of the work rather than imposed as a condition of it.

Online sessions require clients to provide their own materials. These can be simple and familiar, such as paper, pencils, pastels, paint, or collage materials. There is no need to buy specialist equipment. Clients remain responsible for choosing materials and a working environment that are safe for them.

The availability of image-making broadens the possible language of therapy. It does not determine what every session must contain.

Art Therapy and Art Psychotherapy

In the UK, the terms Art Therapy and Art Psychotherapy refer to the same regulated profession. Art Therapy is more familiar to many people and is often the phrase used when searching for this kind of support.

The term can also be used more loosely outside clinical practice to describe art activities intended to support wellbeing. Because “art therapy” is also used more loosely outside the profession, “Art Psychotherapy” can more clearly signal a regulated form of psychotherapy grounded in clinical training, psychological theory, professional standards, and the therapeutic relationship.

As an HCPC registered Art Psychotherapist, my work is informed by psychodynamic and depth-psychological traditions. Sessions usually take place through conversation, with the option of working through images and materials where this feels relevant.

Further details about my professional approach, how sessions are structured, and what Art Psychotherapy may involve can be found on the Art Psychotherapy page of my website.

My relationship with art and psychotherapy

I am both a practising visual artist and a psychotherapist. In my own development, art, psyche, imagination, and psychotherapy have never felt like separate areas of interest. Questions arising through creative practice have often led towards psychological and spiritual concerns.

This continuity was central to my decision to train in Art Psychotherapy. I was drawn to a form of psychotherapy in which images were not treated as secondary illustrations of thoughts already understood, but as meaningful expressions of psychological life in their own right.

My professional identity is not confined to the title Art Psychotherapist. I understand myself as both artist and psychotherapist, with each practice informing the other while retaining its own boundaries. This shapes the way I approach images in therapy: with clinical responsibility, but also with respect for their artistic, imaginal, and sometimes spiritual dimensions.

The Silent Knowing, Andrew Phillips

Why make images in psychotherapy?

An image may give form to something that remains difficult to articulate, allowing it to be encountered before it can be fully understood. It may hold contradiction, invite association, and contribute to the emergence of new thought.

The physical process of making can also bring experiences of uncertainty, choice, control, resistance, and change into the therapeutic relationship. For some people, images open towards symbolic, spiritual, or numinous dimensions of life.

None of this depends upon producing good art.

Image-making is one possible language within psychotherapy. It can extend what is available through words, temporarily take their place, or carry something that remains meaningful without being fully translated. You may begin through conversation and become curious about materials later, or find that verbal psychotherapy remains the most appropriate way of working.

Beginning Art Psychotherapy

I offer online psychotherapy and Art Psychotherapy to adults across the UK through weekly and fortnightly sessions. An initial consultation provides an opportunity to discuss what brings you, learn more about my approach, and consider whether working together may be appropriate.

You do not need artistic experience, and there is no expectation that you will make images. The option is available where it feels useful and relevant to the work.

Further information about how sessions unfold and the process of beginning can be found on the psychotherapy pages of my website.

You are welcome to contact me with questions or to arrange an initial consultation using the form at the foot of this page.