Art therapy as a named practice dates to 1942, when British artist Adrian Hill first used the term while working with patients at a tuberculosis sanatorium. But the idea that making art could heal the mind has much older roots, stretching back to 19th-century psychiatric hospitals and the early days of psychoanalysis. The profession as we know it took shape across several decades, driven by world wars, pioneering therapists on both sides of the Atlantic, and the eventual creation of professional organizations in the 1960s and 1970s.
Art in Hospitals Before “Art Therapy” Existed
Long before anyone called it art therapy, doctors were handing patients paintbrushes. In the early 1800s, psychiatric hospitals in the United States and Europe embraced what was known as “moral therapy,” a reform movement that treated people with mental illness more humanely. Moral therapy encouraged activities like gardening, woodworking, sewing, and reading alongside medical care. Art-making fit naturally into this approach, giving patients a structured, calming activity and a way to express themselves without words.
These early efforts weren’t systematic. No one was training “art therapists” or publishing research on outcomes. But they planted the seed: creative activity seemed to help people recover, and hospitals noticed.
How Psychoanalysis Laid the Groundwork
The theoretical case for art therapy came largely from psychoanalysis in the early 20th century. Sigmund Freud’s method of free association, where patients say whatever comes to mind, suggested that unconscious material could surface through creative expression. But it was Carl Jung who took this further with a technique he called active imagination. Where free association is essentially passive (the unconscious dictates, the conscious mind listens), active imagination asks the person to actively engage with images rising from the unconscious, creating a kind of internal dialogue.
Jung encouraged patients to draw, paint, and sculpt as part of this process. He saw art-making not as decoration but as a direct bridge between a person’s conscious awareness and deeper psychological material. This idea, that the act of creating visual art could reveal and resolve inner conflicts, became one of the core principles that art therapy was eventually built on.
Adrian Hill and the Birth of the Term
Adrian Hill, a British artist who had served as a commissioned war artist during World War I, is widely credited as the first person to use the phrase “art therapy.” He discovered its power firsthand. In 1938, while recovering from tuberculosis in a sanatorium, Hill found that drawing and painting helped him cope with the long, isolating months of treatment. The experience was so striking that he began encouraging fellow patients to do the same.
By 1941, Hill was working with wounded soldiers at King Edward VII Hospital in Midhurst, England, helping them paint and also enjoy the benefits of viewing art. He focused on the restorative qualities of making things by hand, and from direct experience he recognized how art could reach problems that conversation alone could not. He formally used the term “art therapy” in 1942 and published his ideas in a 1945 book titled Art versus Illness.
World War II as a Turning Point
The devastation of the Second World War created enormous demand for new ways to treat psychological trauma, and art therapy found its moment. In the UK, Hill’s work at Midhurst was one strand of a broader movement. At Hollymoor Hospital in Birmingham, psychiatrists Wilfred Bion and Sigmund Foulkes ran what became known as the Northfield Experiments, an ambitious project aimed at rehabilitating war-wounded soldiers so they could return to active service. Group therapy methods were developed there, and starting in 1944, an art hut at the same hospital offered free creative expression for groups of wounded veterans, facilitated by Sergeant Laurence Bradbury.
Hill and Bradbury represented two contrasting early approaches. Hill emphasized the inherent healing power of the art-making process itself. Bradbury’s work leaned more toward free expression in a group setting. Both demonstrated that art could help traumatized soldiers process experiences they struggled to put into words, and this wartime evidence gave the young field credibility it hadn’t had before.
Margaret Naumburg and the American Approach
Across the Atlantic, art therapy developed along a more psychoanalytic path. Margaret Naumburg, a New York-born artist and psychiatrist, is considered one of the most important American pioneers. She spent roughly a decade developing her own form of art therapy, which used spontaneous art expression as a tool for both diagnosis and treatment. Her approach was deeply rooted in psychoanalytic theory: patients’ artwork was treated much like dreams, as windows into unconscious conflicts that could then be explored in therapy.
Naumburg held a firm conviction that aspiring art therapists needed to undergo their own therapy before they could effectively help others. Over the years, several would-be students who sought her out became her clients first, because she believed therapists had to confront their own psychological conflicts before taking on someone else’s. This emphasis on self-awareness and rigorous training helped shape art therapy into a serious clinical discipline rather than a casual enrichment activity.
Becoming a Recognized Profession
By the 1960s, art therapy had enough practitioners, enough clinical evidence, and enough momentum to organize. The American Art Therapy Association (AATA) was founded on June 27, 1969, in Louisville, Kentucky. Its creation was driven partly by broader cultural forces. The civil rights movement and mental health reform efforts of that era helped give momentum to a new professional organization that championed a more humanistic, creative approach to treatment.
In the UK, the British Association of Art Therapists was formally incorporated in 1977, giving the profession an official body to set standards, advocate for practitioners, and push for recognition within healthcare systems. These organizations transformed art therapy from something individual pioneers practiced in scattered hospitals into a credentialed field with defined training requirements, ethical standards, and a growing body of published research.
A Timeline of Key Moments
- Early 1800s: Moral therapy movement introduces creative activities in psychiatric hospitals
- Early 1900s: Jung’s active imagination technique provides a theoretical basis for using art in psychological treatment
- 1938: Adrian Hill discovers the therapeutic value of art while recovering from tuberculosis
- 1942: Hill coins the term “art therapy”
- 1944: Art-based rehabilitation programs for WWII veterans expand in British hospitals
- 1945: Hill publishes Art versus Illness
- 1940s–1950s: Margaret Naumburg develops psychoanalytically oriented art therapy in the United States
- 1969: The American Art Therapy Association is founded
- 1977: The British Association of Art Therapists is formally incorporated
Art therapy didn’t begin with a single event. It emerged from overlapping streams: the humane treatment of psychiatric patients, psychoanalytic theory, wartime necessity, and the persistence of individual pioneers who recognized what they saw working in front of them. The term itself is just over 80 years old, but the intuition behind it, that making art can help people heal, is considerably older.