From Modeling to Land Art: A Creative Path of Nonverbal Expression toward Verbal Communication

This paper describes an art therapy approach for adolescents in psychiatric hospitals. The theoretical model of working with such patients entails creating multiple envelopes. This open workshop approach is an opportunity for adolescents and caregivers to meet through the expressive medium of modeling. Another medium may be used occasionally called “land art,” which takes place on the hospital’s grounds. Establishing a bond based on trust enhances psychic transactions through mediums that are appropriate at different moments of the hospitalization. Adolescents get to experience with creativity and gradually discover nonverbal forms of expression that give rise to an exchange of ideas and then to verbal formulation. Two clinical cases illustrate this transition.