This paper discusses a unique experiential teaching method in the context of training for art psychotherapists and raises issues relevant to teaching for all workers in health and social care. The art therapy large experiential group of all the students and all the staff (80+), which is held six times a year on the 2-year full-time/3-year part-time programme, is identified with three educational components: learning about art therapy processes, learning about the educational process of becoming a professional, and learning about institutional and political issues relevant for the work-place. This educational method engages the unconscious dynamics of both students and staff and brings this together, through creative activity, with a critical engagement in social and political issues. The group has implications for all health workers in its attention to non-verbal communication, activity as a means to learning and agency in institutional issues in the work-place. The paper brings together a case example in which students were able to process the impact of a nationwide, union strike in the university, with relevant literature from large group theory, small art therapy group theory and performance art. Discussion is given to the process by which the art therapy large group meets its learning objectives.

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This article argues that art often takes second place to the verbal in our conceptualising of art therapy, and that this may be because of an adherence to psychoanalytic thinking which splits subject and object, or combines notions of intersubjectivity with the idea of an individual psyche. This article returns to the origins of the concept of intersubjectivity in philosophy, and explores the significance for art therapy of Merleau-Ponty's idea of the body as expression and speech. By embracing intersubjectivity in art and in therapeutic relationships, art-making in art therapy may be made more visible. These ideas are explored in relation to art therapy practice in groups.

This article reports the findings of a Likert scale survey that was sent to past graduates of the MA Art Psychotherapy, Goldsmiths, University of London asking them about the relevance of their experience in the Art Therapy Large Group (ATLG) to their subsequent employment as art therapists or work in another capacity. The ATLG comprises all the students and staff in a psychodynamically based experiential group that meets six times during the year. Survey questions were drawn from previously devised theory and related to learning relevant to the workplace and the development of professional identity. Though there was a low response rate (20%), there were some significant findings, namely that graduates found the ATLG to be helpful in their work, whether this was art therapy or non-art therapy work, and that those who had studied part-time were much more positive about the applicability of their learning in the group to their work than those who had studied full-time. The findings suggest that the ATLG has a particular role in meeting key performance indicators in professional regulation and teaching and in quality assurance and employability policies in higher education. Finally, the potential for the use of the ATLG beyond the university in the public, private and voluntary sectors is suggested.

This article applies the thinking of Jacques Derrida to contradictions raised in an art therapy group for victims of torture, in which the therapist was white and the group members black. It draws parallels between the hierarchical binaries of talk/art and white/black, understanding these pairs as both stemming from a mind/body binary. The paper explores whether Derrida's deconstruction of the talk/art binary might facilitate the deconstruction of the white/black and colonizer/colonized binaries, with the purpose of preventing us repeating patterns of domination as well as in keeping us open to the 'other'.