Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological perspective on Art Therapy and mental disorders

a literature review

Abstract

 Working with art therapy alongside the care of patients with mental disorders emerges as a different possibility from what has been perpetuated over the centuries, such as isolation, medicalization and therapies aimed only at changing or adapting the subject's behavior. Using art can promote the understanding of this subject in their way of being and expressing oneself based on artistic potential, therefore, the present article aimed to explore the benefits of art as a therapeutic resource in the treatment of patients with mental disorders. This practice consists of handling skills, feelings, emotion, sensation, perception, attention, thoughts and the entire cognitive process, aiming to manifest contents that are not reflected or invisible to others through the creative process, through the most diverse forms of expression , such as dramatization, dance, theater, painting, drawing, modeling, etc. In view of this, the present bibliographical research was able to merge art and psychology, from the phenomenological-existential bias, with the foundation in Merleau-Ponty's perspective, to encompass the perceptions, of the encounter between the manifestations and influences of the internal world towards the external in the face of the movements of ec-xistir, the transformations of being-in-the-world.