From the author: The article was written based on an interview for the magazine “Pro-Rostov”, together with journalist Natalya Kozlova. Art therapy, a method of treatment through artistic creativity, is one of the softest and at the same time profound methods in the arsenal of psychologists and psychotherapists. When drawing, sculpting, or describing his problem or mood in literary form, a person seems to receive a coded message from himself, from his own subconscious. We talked about art therapy with Elena Sotnichenko, a specialist in this field, a psychologist who leads a weekly art therapy group. Recently, this little-known direction in our country has been attracting more and more attention. The reasons for this lie in the “softness” of the healing process itself, in the use of visual and plastic expression of one’s experiences and conflicts, which obscures the pain that is inevitable in the verbal dialogue between the client and the psychologist. Those aspects of our life for which words are of little use or are not suitable at all are harmonized and explored. The right hemisphere of the brain is actively involved in the creative process. Modern civilization uses mainly the verbal communication system and the left “logical” hemisphere. Normal, harmonious human development presupposes equal development of both hemispheres and effective interhemispheric interaction. Moreover, some types of human activity require the work of the right hemisphere - creativity, intuition, cultural education, family structure, raising children and, of course, romanticism in love relationships. Art therapy helps develop the right hemisphere of the brain. – Elena, what are the specifics of art therapy? – Art therapy appeals to a person’s internal, self-healing resources, which are closely related to his creative capabilities. You can more quickly discover and use the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious, because drawings, images, metaphors are a quick path to the unknown depths of the human “I”. You don't need any supernatural abilities to practice art therapy. This is a safe, accepting technique. In this method you can work with pain, with anger, with strong emotions. One of the goals of art therapy is to respond, experience emotions and transform them. Art therapy is not a circle of applied arts. Drawings are used as material with which the psychologist works. In many ways, this is a way of reviving the child in you. It restores spontaneity and expands freedom of choice. We can meet you in art style. When a new group comes together, people worry about how they will be perceived. You can invite them to introduce themselves in the form of some kind of sound that figuratively characterizes them. You can rustle something, click something, in a word, make a sound that symbolizes your state, mood. Then we can give each other a response: how did we see each other in this image? This helps to relax and overcome resistance. A person is free to accept the interpretation or not. What I want, I accept, what I don’t want, I leave to the author. – How developed is art therapy in Russia and in Rostov in particular? – Many psychological areas include working with voice, drawing, and music. But there is little art therapy as such in Rostov; when I created my group, I did not find any competitors. There is an art therapy institute in St. Petersburg, where Alexander Kopytin, the founder of this method in Russia, works. – Tell us about some art therapy exercise. – You can make a “Wish Card”. Desires are better fulfilled when they are written, when you talk about them, you feed them energetically. You need to tune in to your desires, draw a few pictures that will reflect your emotions, the feelings that you experience when you think about these desires. From these pictures a collage is made - a dream card, so that the pictures are interconnectedly placed on the sheet and form a complete picture. This "Dream Map" is worth.