The concept of creative therapy (as a discipline or group of methodologies) is relatively new. However, its roots can be found in the continual but ever-changing relationship between culture, artistic activity and social development. Some writers have gone so far as to suggest that the arts and society are inextricably linked and that the health of a society is reflected in the pool of artistic activity the society creates - and vice versa. Similarly, it has been suggested that individuals exercising their right to make their own creative mark may be considered as a sign of a healthy individual. However, unlike many societies that preceded us, our technologically advanced industrial society has clearly separated art from life. We have words that allow us to categorize and subdivide art forms. Our society has successfully isolated individuals from artistic creation. As a result art is defined in terms of artifacts, products that can be discussed and criticized - often because of their economic rather than their aesthetic or spiritual contributions to society as a whole.

Over the centuries we have created the concept that artistic creation is the responsibility of a few gifted individuals. In so doing, we have denied the majority of individuals within our urban and technologically advanced society their birthrights: that, as a human being, everyone has the right to make his or her own "unique creative thumbprint"—one that no one else could make. We all have a need to make this "mark", not because we necessarily wish to be the reminders to a future generation of a long-lost culture but because each creative mark reaffirms the self. It says "I am here", "I have something to express".

As the workplace has become increasingly dehumanizing and sterile (with fewer and fewer outlets for creative expression) it is not surprising that the arts have come to be seen as therapy. However, Therapy (which implies a prescribed course of treatment with predetermined expected results for a specific diagnosed condition) and the Art(s) (which at least in part suggests an exploration, one that usually finds the notion of predetermined expectation anathema) are strange bedfellows. Art is not a medicine that must be taken three times a day after meals. However, it can feed the soul, motivate an individual to want to recover and, in certain circumstances, cause physiological changes in the body. . .

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