Press reviews for: Healing Arts
Inscape
This book provides a rich source of material for many people to draw on - I imagine many students will be quoting from it in their essays for years to come. Susan Hogan has done us all a service by gathering together this cornucopia of historical evidence and ideas.
History, Journal of the Historical Association
Tracing the lives and works of leading art therapists as well as the ideological and institutional roots of modern art therapy, Healing Arts will be of interest not only to historians of psychiatry and medicine but also to art historians and to practitioners interested in the theoretical, political and professional roots and boundaries of their discipline.
Professor Roy Porter
Healing Arts is particularly welcome. It is broad-church and inclusive in its subject matter; it avoids partisanship; its historical sweep is lengthy; it takes full account of the existing scholarship, while filling in many gaps; it is based upon extensive research, including interviews and unprinted primary materials; it builds from a basis of evident expertise; it is written in a forceful and fluent prose style, entirely lacking in uncouth or modish jargon; not least it displays all the skills and craft needed to narrate a fascinating story, bringing often spiky personalities to life. All in all, Healing Arts: A History of Art Therapy is sure to be a definitive monograph on this subject for the foreseeable future.
Professor Mary Douglas (Cultural Theorist and Anthropologist)
Fascinating in itself, it belongs in the history of ideas, and the history of medicine.
David Lomas (Art Historian)
Her work is a rich tapestry weaving together elements of medical and psychiatric history, art history, as well as contributing to the history of psychoanalysis and its reception in Britian - art therapy emerges as the site where these hugely influential cultural discoursers are knitted together.