This paper addresses what I perceive to be the underlying assumptions of art psychotherapy theory, drawn from observation of my own clinical work, which I believe inform practice descriptions that were proposed as guidelines by the The British Association of Art Therapists’ Special Interest Group in Personality Disorder for the practice of art psychotherapgy with individuals with a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder. It is hoped that these assumptions or elements, could be seen to be applicable to all forms of art therapy practice. From these assumptions I derive the hypothesis that the art object serves a function and that it is the therapists task to determine what this function is. In order to provide a conceptual framework on which to base this task I propose the concept of the ‘art-psychotherapy object’ being the totality of triangular relationship. I explore the concept of the function of the art object through reference to that of defense both because I believe it to helpfully illustrate my thesis and as it seems to me an area of art psychotherapy theory and practice which has not been sufficiently studied.

中文翻译：

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艺术对象的功能：艺术心理治疗理论与实践

本文阐述了我认为是根据我自己的临床工作观察得出的艺术心理治疗理论的基本假设，我认为这些信息可以为英国艺术治疗师协会人格特殊兴趣小组作为指南提出的实践描述提供参考。诊断为边缘性人格障碍的人进行艺术心理治疗的障碍。希望可以将这些假设或要素视为适用于所有形式的艺术疗法实践。从这些假设中，我得出一个假设，即艺术品具有功能，确定该功能是治疗师的任务。为了提供以此任务为基础的概念框架，我提出了“艺术心理治疗对象”的概念，即三角关系的整体。我通过参考辩护来探索艺术对象功能的概念，因为我认为它可以帮助说明我的论文，而且在我看来，艺术心理治疗理论和实践领域还没有得到足够的研究。