The Art Therapy Working Alliance Inventory: The Development of a Measure

What is it about?

In verbal psychotherapy, a strong therapeutic alliance between client and therapist is necessary to achieve therapeutic goals. In art therapy (AT), this alliance includes a third object: the art medium, comprised of art-materials, the artmaking and the artworks. In this study, we developed and tested a self-report questionnaire that measures the client-art medium alliance formed in AT. Based on a well-known measure used in psychotherapy (WAI: Horvath & Greenberg, 1989), we composed the AT-WAI, that features three main aspects: the client’s perception of the art medium as a therapeutic tool (Art-Task), the client’s affective experience of his/her artwork (Art Experience), and the client’s acceptance/rejection of the art-therapist’s interventions in the art medium (Art Therapist Acceptance). that features three main aspects: the client’s perception of the art medium as a therapeutic tool (Art-Task), the client’s affective experience of his/her artwork (Art Experience), and the client’s acceptance/rejection of the art-therapist’s interventions in the art medium (Art Therapist Acceptance). We asked 104 art therapy students to assume the role of clients in AT and fill out the questionnaire at the end of a therapy simulation. We found a strong association between the two alliance scores; in other words, the stronger the alliance between the art-therapist and the client, the stronger the alliance between the client and the art medium. The AT-WAI can serve as a useful tool in the research of AT practice.

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Why is it important?

It is crucial to measure and study with empiric tools the art therapy process. our tool enable to measure the unique aspects in the relations between client and the are medium.

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