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Rating: 
Summary: important contribution to the field
Review: As a practitioner and graduate teacher of Art Therapy, I was very impressed and excited to read this text. This book is a thorough, well-organized, clearly written volume. I am currently teaching, "Introduction to Art Therapy" for the Masters in Art Therapy program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. My students have remarked that the book has been very helpful to their understanding and appreciation of Art Therapy. In addition to all its other attributes, one of its primary benefits is the most thorough and up-to-date literature review of the field that in my experience exists. Ms. Rubin's reasearch abilities are obviously great and she has demonstrated enormous skill in synthesizing, in a clear and easily accessible form, a great wealth of material on the history, practice, technique, usefulness, and definition of the profession. Ms. Rubin has provided an invaluable resource for the profession by writing this book and it has enhanced my ongoing respect and admiration for this and her many contributions to our field.
Rating:
Summary: FINALLY, THE BOOK WE NEED AND WANT
Review: Being an old-timer in the field, I need no "introduction". But this book I find I both NEED and WANT.I NEED it because it explains art therapy to the general public and students in the field better than any other book I know. I wish it had been around for the last 30 years when I was teaching graduate students in a dozen schools around the country. It brings the field to life! I know of no other book that documents so much information about art therapy. Nobody I know has such a command of the source material in the field. I WANT it for an assortment of reasons. For one thing, it is never dry or ponderous - as its vast scholarship might suggest. She writes conversationally, making even the most complex ideas easily accessible to the lay person, the prospective or beginning student...charming and delighting old-timers like me. Her format of small subject headings and bold type to emphasize essentials makes it easy to skim and shortcut. This beomes, then, a useful SOURCE BOOK for those trying to get a quick overview of the field. She attributes ideas and writings widely, to everyone in the field who has made contributions. This is a GENEROUS book. She is modest, witty and very proactical too. Fo those considering entering the field, here is an HONEST PICTURE of what problems as well as rewards are in store. Who should read it? First off, people who want to know more about the field as well as students. And for people like me, or practitioners already working as art therapists, this is the book we need to have in our libraries. Also I think it should be in counselors' offices in every art school, high school and especially college in the country. People don't know a great deal about this field, and school counselors will find no better SOURCE BOOK to help their students. Interested practitioners in other fields will find useful chapters on Assessment, various Approaches, and the work going on with a variety of people in many different places: medical fields, crisis work, community institutions, and so on. It also discusses multimodality approaches (e.g. music, dance, drama & art). Here are vivid stories and photos showing us how art therapy ACTUALLY WORKS.
Rating:
Summary: FINALLY, THE BOOK WE NEED AND WANT
Review: Being an old-timer in the field, I need no "introduction". But this book I find I both NEED and WANT. I NEED it because it explains art therapy to the general public and students in the field better than any other book I know. I wish it had been around for the last 30 years when I was teaching graduate students in a dozen schools around the country. It brings the field to life! I know of no other book that documents so much information about art therapy. Nobody I know has such a command of the source material in the field. I WANT it for an assortment of reasons. For one thing, it is never dry or ponderous - as its vast scholarship might suggest. She writes conversationally, making even the most complex ideas easily accessible to the lay person, the prospective or beginning student...charming and delighting old-timers like me. Her format of small subject headings and bold type to emphasize essentials makes it easy to skim and shortcut. This beomes, then, a useful SOURCE BOOK for those trying to get a quick overview of the field. She attributes ideas and writings widely, to everyone in the field who has made contributions. This is a GENEROUS book. She is modest, witty and very proactical too. Fo those considering entering the field, here is an HONEST PICTURE of what problems as well as rewards are in store. Who should read it? First off, people who want to know more about the field as well as students. And for people like me, or practitioners already working as art therapists, this is the book we need to have in our libraries. Also I think it should be in counselors' offices in every art school, high school and especially college in the country. People don't know a great deal about this field, and school counselors will find no better SOURCE BOOK to help their students. Interested practitioners in other fields will find useful chapters on Assessment, various Approaches, and the work going on with a variety of people in many different places: medical fields, crisis work, community institutions, and so on. It also discusses multimodality approaches (e.g. music, dance, drama & art). Here are vivid stories and photos showing us how art therapy ACTUALLY WORKS.
Rating: 
Summary: a lot of info but not well-organized
Review: I guess I disagree with the previous reviewer on this book. I found it very confusing and disorganized in its content. It was not a very clear introduction to art therapy and the examples presented were not very helpful regarding what art therapists really do. The beginning is very historical and that was not really of interest to someone like me who wants to know what art therapy is. Maybe art therapy is a lot of history and it is hard to describe to others. I believe the author was sincere, but there is actually too much information presented in this book. If the author were a little more selective, the average reader might find this book more helpful. I agree that this book is well-referenced, but for a lay reader it is over referenced. Almost every other sentence is a reference and many of the references are to material that is not published. I am wondering if art therapy is an unpublished field because the author uses a lot of these types of references. I found that very distracting and it did not help the clarity of this book. This book would probably be best for art therapists who understand the various dimensions of their field. But for those who want to know in a readable manner what art therapy is and what art therapists do, this is not that book.
Rating:
Summary: too much history, not enough substance
Review: I was misled by the title of this book. By some stretch of the word, it could be an introduction. But it is more like a rambling exploration of the history of the field of art therapy that jumps from person to person, often with only one sentence about each person. The chapters promise information on many ideas but none is covered in any meaningful way. And I certainly did not get a positive impression of art therapy from this book. In fact, it seems like a field that does not have a clear definition or the author could not come up with one. As a clinical social worker I was hoping for some more practical and less reference-oriented. This book reads like a dictionary, so if you are looking for something like that, it is the book you want.
Rating:
Summary: Book didn't sell me on art therapy
Review: The author may be a good writer, but this book did not sell me on the idea of art therapy. I read it and still wondered, what is art therapy? I agree with the first reviewer who said it is a great reference listing. But I enjoyed The Art Therapy Sourcebook more and would recommend that book if you want to know more about art therapy. It gave me a better idea of what art therapy is and how it is done.
Rating: 
Summary: Reads like a reference list, not a book
Review: This indeed is a comprehensive book on the professional field of art therapy. But is reads like one long reference list and is a book that actually turned me off to the field of art therapy rather than inspiring me to find out more. It seems that the author has listed every possible reference to the field of art therapy in this volume and every possible historical reference. At the end I was still left wondering, what is art therapy? This seems like a great book to have in a college library collection as a resource, but frankly, otherwise I found it turgid and boring.
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