What do you see here? Once, more than six months ago, I had an interesting experience communicating with additional education teachers. I spoke at advanced training courses for teachers working with children with disabilities. I talked about my experience of conducting art therapy classes. Then the course leader asked me: “Well, what is the difference here from an art teacher’s classes with such a child? What is the uniqueness of your activities and their value?” I was even dumbfounded for a moment. Then I realized that the leader was playing the role of a skeptic teacher who does not see the point in art therapy and so they say in art classes there is continuous “art therapy”. I thought, both here and there we draw, what is the fundamental difference between our classes? But no! After a micro pause, she continued to answer that in my classes there is freedom of choice, flexibility, there is a place for spontaneity, there is recognition of the uniqueness of the author and dialogue through drawing. Yes, I often talk more due to the complexity of the developmental defect, but those minimal changes towards revealing the child’s personality are especially valuable. First of all, our fine arts teachers and I have different goals. In art therapy, all the attention is paid to the process, emotional contact, drawing acts only as a means for human development and solving his problems; we work primarily with the unconscious of a person. In art classes, the teacher’s task is to teach how to draw. Having said this, she fell silent and looked at the art teachers; there was some disappointment in their eyes, as if they wanted to say: “We all knew this.” The sediment remained. The desire to devalue prevailed over interest. It is very sad. After all, cooperation would bring us more benefits. And so everyone remained with their own opinion. In the photo, the work of a child with severe mental retardation (published with the consent of the author of the picture and her mother) According to the mother, she has become different! And I see this, the look is more meaningful and there is an interest in what she is doing , which means art therapy works. The article is taken from my blog on Instagram* @olga_art.therapy* Instagram belongs to the company Meta, which is recognized as an extremist organization in Russia.