According to E. J. Khantzian's (2003) self-medication hypothesis (SMH), a psychoanalytically informed theory of substance addiction that considers emotional and psychological dimensions, substance addiction functions as a compensatory means to modulate affects and self-soothe from the distressful psychological states. To manage emotional pain, dysphoria, and anxiety, substance abusers use the drug actions, both physiological and psychological effects, to achieve emotional stability. The SMH was retrospectively tested using 6 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 special scales with 402 non-drug users and drug users to capture the psychological elements relevant to the SMH. Three logistic regression models were formed to predict alcohol, cocaine, and heroin "drug-of-choice" groups. Predicting variables were the Repression, Overcontrolled Hostility, Psychomotor Acceleration, Depression, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, and Cynicism scales. Repression and, inversely, Depression scales significantly predicted the alcohol group. Psychomotor Acceleration was the only significant predictor of the cocaine group. Cynicism significantly predicted heroin preference. The results are partially consistent with the SMH. Implications of these results for understanding the relationship between affect regulation and addiction and treatment interventions are discussed.

This paper is informed by a DfES funded research project, Creative Connections, initiated and directed by the Institute of Education (IoE) and Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) as part of the DfES Museums and Galleries Education Programme 1999–2003. The concern is to focus on an unexpected finding concerning art and design teachers' negligible engagement with, and understanding of, curatorial issues and practices. This is set against a backdrop of the recent proliferation of literature addressing curatorial matters. The etymology and genealogy of the curator are discussed in order to establish the curatorial role as a symbolic (modernist) location where discourses pertaining to post‐structuralism, postmodernism, post‐colonialism and critical pedagogy currently coincide. By highlighting some of the main concerns that art and design teachers experience when taking pupils to galleries and museums, I suggest that engaging with curating has the potential not only to facilitate critical engagement with galleries and museums but also to empower and inform teachers' use of these venues as learning resources. Through references to the research questionnaire findings, focus group interviews and evaluations of pilot CPD initiatives, a case for more teacher engagement and understanding of the frameworks in which art and artefacts are encountered is argued. First, as an important dimension for learning and teaching about art and design, and second, to counteract the generally uncritical and compliant approach to using galleries and museums that can result from a lack of opportunity to engage with cultural concerns.

This article examines change in the human figure drawings (HFDs) of 32 seriously disturbed young adults during the course of intensive inpatient treatment. HFDs drawn at the time of admission were compared with HFDs obtained more than 1 year after intensive treatment began; both sets were scored on the Goodenough-Harris Scale (GH) and the Robins Balance-Tilt Scale (RBT). The findings indicate that the HFDs significantly improved over the course of treatment, but only for those patients judged introjective, not anaclitic. These findings are consistent with prior research on the same population that were based on analyses of clinical case records and Rorschach protocols (Blatt, Ford, Berman, Cook, & Meyer, 1988). Significant change in the HFDs over the course of treatment suggests that the HFDs provide a unique and independent dimension for assessing therapeutic change.

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This article draws on recent research from the Pre‐Degree Summative Assessment in Art Design and Media Study, conducted at UCL Institute of Education, which found that pre‐degree art and design qualifications at levels 3 and 4 vary greatly in their appropriateness as a preparation for degree level study in art subjects. Central to the article are findings concerning external assessment processes and assessor selection and training. The research was commissioned by the awarding body of University of the Arts London in response to the then imminent Department for Education (DFE) directives for additional external assessment in all level 3 and 4 vocational pre‐degree programmes. Our research revealed the negative consequences of assessment becoming a bureaucratic process of measuring what is most easily measurable. In such instances it can become a task that is devoid of ‘expert’ knowledge and opinion. As the research demonstrates, the consequences for art education are serious. The title is appropriated from Bourdieu's sociological examination ‘But who created the “creators”?’ which casts a critical eye on the broader social landscape in which art and artists are produced and imbricated into the wider cultural order. To ask, who assesses the assessors? Is, of course, to ask a different kind of question, but never‐the‐less it is one which deserves to be opened out to scrutiny beyond the specificity of individual qualifications. This article's contribution argues for a more sustainable and radically transparent assessment regime in which professional expertise can be shared across the UK's secondary, further and higher education continuum.