The author gives an overview of some important connection between mental life and visual world. A picture not only communicates and represents but expresses moving the deeper layer of personality. Pictures are parts of the external world and essential elements of our internal representations as well. In infant the memories of enviromental persons are stored up with interactions. Though verbal factors have a very important role in our thought and speech but mental patients very often express themselves much better visually than verbally. Pictures might come from the deeper layers of the personality revealing unconscious contents. Artistic experience is of such origin and here we find the therapeutic effect of art therapy: we can use drawing and painting - alone or combined with other treatments - for therapy of mental disorders. Art - showing human problems, mental conflicts - serves not only culture, but psychological education as well. Artworks of artists, mentally troubled artists and patients are of great service for the mental education and prevention of the society.

If I know the characteristics of a certain object, this knowledge will determine the method by which I approach it. Otherwise I shall have to try again and again. To be sure such "trial and error" experimentation must not necessarily be without an objective. But it is decisively impeded if I am guided by false assumptions. Thus in the realm of psychodiagnostics we can observe a change in recognition which directly affects our understanding of the appropriateness of the traditional drawing techniques:

1. Earlier on the whole was deducted from the characteristics of the parts. Today it is more realistic to say that one tries to define the characteristics of the parts from their position in the whole.

2. In the past the structures being analysed were thought to be unchangeable. The processes, by which these structures related to each other, were studied. Conversely, today one considers processes as leading to different structures.

3. In the past the belief was considered valid that recognition can be reached in an "objective" way; that is, independently from the recognizing subject and the process of recognition. However today the more valid assumption is that independence is fictitious.

4. In the past the aim of scientific procedure was to achieve valid single statements which in the end could be integrated in a unifying theory. Today one is prepared to consider that the respective thought of interrelation can only be considered valid according to the position from which it is being observed. Reality can't be represented other than by means of a network of interrelations, where the individual access constitutes the observed connections.

5. Earlier on in the realm of the natural sciences the belief was absolutely valid that reality could be seized and described. Converserly, today there is a tendency to be ambivalent about that. For if terms may denote something, they may as well misrepresent. Therefore they may only be considered as approximations of reality, but not as their essence.
A method that promises to fulfill these requirements better than others is the so-called systems analysis. Systems in this sense are constructions of thought, meant to help describe certain segments of reality as a working network. Its elements and interrelations constitute the object concerned.
The importance of this new concept is outlined in determining an adequate method in the field of personality assessment using drawing techniques.

The graphic representation of the flow of time, a simple thematic drawing method proved to be very useful in the investigation of the emotionally loaded space symbolism or in collecting data about the development and connotations of the Time concept. We gained insight in the value systems and life purposes of individuals as well as in some collective ideas concerning the progress of mankind.

We gathered hundreds of drawings since 1970 in various transcultural settings, in different age- and professional groups, in healthy and in sick people. We analysed the thematic repertoire of drawings, their aesthetic quality and originality. Despite many marked differences we found some universally valid basic time-symbols: the biological - especially the human - life cycles, the alternation in social roles, the clock motif or the allegories of technical progress. It emerged the necessity of classifying this description and the interpretation of drawings' components.

In this paper we offer a detailed typology of representations concerning time's course together with some applications of our method in transcultural psychology, in psychopathology and in psychosomatic medicine.

This overview of a period of seven and a half centuries confirms two main ideas. On the one hand, it reminds us that madness is universal: as the French psychiatrist Edouard Zarifian says today, it is "a strange plant which societies react to madness is a long-term and durable phenomenon." Thus we have observed a continuity in the history of mental disorder in the Western world which transcends specific circumstances linked with a given place or time.

Our study required a cross-disciplinary approach, combining history of art, medical history and the history of mentalities-also referred to as psychohistory. It stresses at all periods of history. We could add to these images depicting mental disease in a more or less partisan way the pictures produced by the patients themselves, either spontaneously (here is ans example of the work of the psychotic priest Opicinus in the XIVth century), or in the context of an asylum (here are two paintings, one by Wölfli and one by Aloise, both XXth century). It was only towards the end of the XIXth century that psychiatrists began to turn their attention to the pictures produced by the insane: starting with the pioneering work written by Hanz Prinzorn, Bildnerei der Geisteskranken a number of studies were initiated and the first surrealists, such as Max Ernst and André Breton brought into fashion "mad art", which was then called "art brut" and then "art singulier".

Finally, we chose the middle of the XXth century as the end of the period which this paper has studied, because of the spectacular changes which, as you know, have taken place in psychiatry over the last fifty years. First with the progress in and diversification of the therapeutic approach: the effectiveness of seismotherapy, the discovery of modern psychotropic drugs (neuropletics, anti-depressant drugs, tranquillizers...), psychotherapies, psychoanalysis, sociotherapies... Also the development of hospital practice, which become more open to the outside world, with day-care units and therapeutic apartments... for an effort has been made to encourage the socio-profesional re-insertion of the patient into society. However, in public opininon, the image of the madman has retained its irrational, disturbing und unsettling aura.

Hospital care today is reserved for the most extreme cases of anorexia nervosa. Free drawing is proposed to all the patients. Anorexia is the disorder in which spontaneous expression is most closely related to chidhood, and the most childlike. We can expect to find self portraits with a childish appearance; child's world, children's games (hopscotch, toys, pets), clowns as devaluated representations of the father, images of verticality and ablitity to fly, indistinct bodies of the child and the mother on images of motherhood.
The childlike drawings reflect a high degree of affective immaturity.

Dyslexic children, despite being well developed intellectually, present a distinctly poor performance in human figure drawing. The error of body outline, observable in the drawings indicates the deficiency and/our under-development of the intertion of personality. The dyslexia, while hindering the learning perfomance, has an effect on the whole personality of the child as well.

The paper exploiting resources of 145 child-custody cases analyses the characteristics of children's family drawings focusing on the emotional state of children and children's preferences concerning parents.

The paper aims to categorize children's reactions and the typical causes of reactions on the basis of convergence or divergence between the findings of exploration and the data gained from family drawings. The paper also examines and takes into consideration the effects of parental influences on the data gained from the above research methods.

By the aid of childrens' hospital drawings we could follow their special associations, the elaboration of magical saturation dealing with personal experiences and their attempts to alleviate strong mental tension. Children are able to express their separation anxiety and the humiliation and horror of being alone. Their drawings also show the fragile and abolishing ego-borders, the frightful medical machines and furniture, the delineation of separation anxiety holding them in the captivity of the narrowing space. Some of these pictures are very impressive revealing the self-healing tendencies and the mobilization of ego-forces. These children express their whirling and tightening emotions and experiences not being able to do it verbally. This process has a tension liberating and anxiety alleviating - that is a certain - cathartic effect.

These children by the help of projection not only place outside unintelligible and meaningless experiences and processes, but give form and arrange them. They do not yield to desintegrative forces but gain controll over them.

The authors explore the art historical, psychoanalytical and psychopathological aspects of mother-child drawings. They introduce their collection with the few case studies, and introduce the psychodiagnostic and art therapeutic perspectives of the discussed issue.

We compared two serials of drawings from our patient's two separate life-period. We wanted to illustrate how separation, humiliation and the permanent feeling of danger can change personality. Not only the forty years difference can be seen on them but the tightening of the character, the draining of the personality, decoloration and loss of flexibility can be followed also very well.

Multiplex traumatization and constant stress can destroy the healthy defence mechanisms of the ego decreasing its adaptive functions. Even long psychotherapy can't give back the flexibility of the person. A relative healthy balance can be reached but even the slightest trauma can brake this unstable equilibrium.

Fate or mental problem? A disease caused by fate or fate being the result of a disease? It might remain without any answer as to elder patients. The psychiatrist's task is to explore, understand and accept the several somatic, historical and other factors of pathology as well as the "key-trauma" of the mental process evaluating the patient's further possiblities and future summarising the actual qualities.

On the base of 3000 drawings the author deals with the rehabilitation of mentaly retarded patients. For prognostic aims he uses the Goodenough-test and Hárdi's dynamic examination of drawings. On the personality scales of the latter he states that patients standing on the level of b1 periodically by directed work and those on the level of c and d could be rehabilitated by regular work.

The lecture deals with the group art psychotherapy of schizophrenics. The group is part of the complex treatment modality which was developed in our setting. The group art psychotherapy is seen in the context of the work of Naumburg, Lucas, Wadeson, Jakab and Kramer. The group in the first half is to work out drawings and in the second part is to discuss the explored issues.

Many important diagnostic and psychotherapeutic aspects are evaluated, the form, the content of the works and the transferences in the group-process are relevant aspects of the work.

We present the work of an art therapy group for chronic schizophrenic outpatients. Art therapy group is an integral part of the treatment modalities of our clinic. The group works paralel to them as a creative workshop. Beside aesthetic creating, the personal experience of self-expression are emphasized. The group-sessions contain two main parts. The drawings, paintings are made in the first period. In the second part the participants show their products to each other, reflect to them, "play" with them, without the therapist's interpretations in proper sense. The group creates not only drawings, paintings, dialogues, jokes, but also recreates itself all the time.

In accordance with the tradition of our clinic, we applied frequently graphic expression in our diagnostic and therapeutic work with psychotic patients. The pictorial expression of feelings, ideas, impulses, and conflicts serves an important source of data regarding the patients' delusional and hallucinatory experiences.

In our therapeutic practice we use both art therapy and art psychotherapy. In our interpretative work we used different methods of symbol interpretation Freudian, Jungian as well as object-relational approaches. By the application of art psychotherapy the therapeutic contact could be substantially widened. The great role of imagery in art expression enhances the revealing and externalization of unconscious preverbal psychic traumas. The drawings, which represent objectified feelings and ideas of the patients, allow a separation from them and the recognition of their existence. Art threapy forms a bridge between the unconsious internal feelings and the externalized object produced.

Art therapy is a branch of rehabilitation therapy. In the rehabilitaton process art and folkart create new values and guard over them. Both of them increase creativity, self-reliability an susceptibility to new things. Art therapy helps personality development, social adaptation and human recreation.

The author gives a short overview of a new sociotherapeutic method, the Creative Camp developed by the author and his co-workers. This form of organization unites the advantages of individual and group psychotherapy by the common creative activity. The paper is illustrated by the artworks of camping patients.