The practice of graffiti has become a popular way for adolescents to act out in opposition to the authoritative, adult society that restricts them. By directly disobeying the law and demonstrating their defiance of societal norms, young graffiti writers engage in a socially unacceptable form of making themselves seen and heard by society. Graffiti becomes a way for young people to outwardly express their inner struggle for identity through a creative outlet. It is as though they are literally “writing back” to society as they take matters in to their own hands. Because these kids aren’t given the opportunities and outlets to express themselves freely, these natural impulses are suppressed and, in turn, get channeled through the socially defiant act of writing on society’s walls, the very walls that confine them.
In the eyes of the general public, graffiti is a nuisance and an infringement upon the lives of innocent citizens. It has become a major problem in most big cities, causing an uproar and driving law enforcement to instigate a “war on graffiti” (Austin, 2001). This war costs millions of tax dollars every year which go solely to the cleanup of graffiti and punishment measures for the perpetrators. Despite all of the money and energy put into “controlling” the graffiti problem, efforts are untriumphant as adolescents continue to paint their urban landscape with the colors of their experience.
In order to move toward a viable solution to the graffiti problem, it is essential that efforts be made at understanding the motivation for the behavior of the kids that participate in this illegal activity and approaching them with empathy. Rather than trying to solve the problem by dealing with its symptoms, which is not only a waste of money but serves to prolong the issue, solutions must get at the source of the problem in order to sustain any change. This involves working with the kids who are doing graffiti and helping them understand the process of development that they are going through as individuals in search of identity.
The Graffiti Art Therapy Research Project was designed as a model for demonstrating the therapeutic possibilities of working with adolescent graffiti offenders from within their own realm of interest. The project explores the effects of using the medium of graffiti art and culture to give these kids an opportunity to develop their creative expressions in a socially acceptable venue. Through this experience the participants have the opportunity to explore issues of identity and self in community by engaging in art directives, facilitated by an art therapist, which can offer reflective insight and instigate therapeutic change and maturation. The art therapy groups are co-facilitated by a youth worker who was once an illegal graffiti artist as an adolescent and is now a law-abiding, positive role model. Thus, the young participants are able to connect with and be influenced by someone they can relate to and respect, as opposed to an adult professional who represents the institution of authority.
According to Linesch(1988), “the adolescent is faced with an enormous task, one that can only be accomplished with the experimentation and rebelliousness that have come to be typical of teenage youngsters in our society” (p.5). Adolescence is a natural time of resistance to authority. This preoccupation with rebelliousness is directly related to the developmental process that this age group is dealing with. In order to truly see themselves as autonomous individuals, adolescents must reject the forces of authority that seem to want only to control them. It is through this process of rejection that they may establish their own sense of who they are.
Riley(2001) says that, “achieving some notion of ‘who am I?’, is the constant quest and narcissistic focus for the years between childhood and adulthood” (p.140). Teenagers are on a quest to figure out who they are as individuals. The natural progression of that quest involves the adoption of some form of outlet which enables the youth to share who they are with the world as well as provide a screen for them to see themselves in a light that fosters identification with their proposed identity. According to Belfer(1990), “adolescents search for identity as much as they seek a context for the expression of their identity” (p.558).
Many adolescents engage in antisocial behavior as they explore their individuality and test the boundaries around them. Often, the public sphere becomes the target of their resistance as it represents to them all things controlling or authoritative. Society, with all its rules, regulations and limitations, becomes the super-parent from which to separate from. As all youth in this stage of adolescence must go through similar fights for independence, they are able to relate to one another and join together in their fight against the oppressive forces of authority. Society becomes the collective parental figure in which all youth can have a shared experience of the fight for identity.
In a society that has become so preoccupied with media, the value of self worth is often judged by fame. Austin(2001) feels that in the U.S. “to see one’s ‘name in lights’ is to achieve an exalted public status in the eyes of the world” (p.39). The Western societal culture of consumerism breeds the saturation of city landscapes with advertisements. These advertisements are commercial, corporate, colorful signs in shared public space which imply “don’t forget this name”(Austin, 2001). This sets the stage for the attitude which equates widespread recognition with identity and desirability. Young people in this society adopt this attitude from the collective culture but at the same time are not included in it. Therefore, they create their own unique manner of self expression. These culturally acquired attitudes fit into their own world view and are accessible within the limitations that society has put on them.
Many people, young and old want to be recognized. In a time when they are unsure of who they are, adolescents seek validation for their evolving sense of self. This creates an even greater need to be seen and heard in the public sphere. Austin(2001) quotes MIDG, a young writer(graffiti artist) from New York, as saying, “people know us because we paint trains. If we just stayed in the neighborhoods, no one would ever know who we are”(p.47). Graffiti becomes a way for the struggling adolescent to communicate his inner identity conflict and be acknowledged in the world. In Bryan’s(1998) documentary video, Graffiti Verite 2, Wel, a writer from Los Angeles, is asked to share his motivation for his illegal art:
“It’s an expression of my mind. It’s my mind coming to reality. It’s a thought comin to reality so people can see it. It’s the manifestation of a thought, so everybody to see what I’m thinking” “Why is it important for anybody to really give a shit about what you’re thinking?” “Really it’s for me, you know what I’m sayin’, it’s me showing the world, it’s like me yellin, Well, you know what I’m sayin’, it’s me yellin to the whole world.....I exist, I’m here”.
As a result of their struggle for identity and their lack of control within the social order, adolescents are full with displaced energy. They must, as a natural process of identity formation, express themselves outwardly to externalize their inner struggle and work it out in the world. Linesch(1988) writes, “the feelings of self absorption and isolation, which the adolescent experiences contributes to their propensity toward creativity”(p.5). Youth in this stage have a natural need to express themselves. And for some youth, graffiti acts as a creative form of expression for a population whose tumultuous energy is so often suppressed by society. Asyl’m, a writer from California, in an interview captured on video (Graffiti Verite' 2) by Bryan(1998), contends:
“There’s so many laws out there, you know, especially here to the minorities, and we’re just fed up, you know, that’s just a way of getting out there and sayin’ forget you guys.......Yeah I feel oppressed.....doing graffiti relieves some of that oppression. Going out there without people telling you what to do.......There is not freedom of expression, there isn’t such a thing, there’s always someone out there that’s in control. So I guess it would be nice if we did have freedom of expression. So you know, graffiti allows us to do this. I’ll go out there and be free.”
In another interview from the video Graffiti Verite' 2, Bryan(1998), captures a writer named Bruin saying,
“it is an art form in which I would say almost personifies the oppression that the individual has gone through and I would say that it hardly ever gets captivated as much as graffiti captivates that struggle”.
In a time when violence and drug use has become so common among adolescents, graffiti acts as a less self destructive, if illegal, alternative for channeling the rebellious energy of youth. It has become a ritualized rebellion and formed into a whole culture which offers young people a way to express themselves and their personal frustrations as well as give them a public forum for social criticism.
“We’re out here cause this is our way of expressing ourselves, our way of keeping it real for ourselves, that’s what it’s about”.
These words from a writer called Elfe (Graffiti Verite' 2), exemplify the notion that graffiti is a necessary coping mechanism for the unfavorable conditions put on writers by their own adolescent turmoil in conjunction with the oppression of society. However, the majority of authority figures, who make the rules in the “oppressive” society do not have compassion for these young people.
Graffiti has become a huge problem in many urban environments and cities spend millions of dollars every year in attempts to control it. However, because of the widespread cultural legacy that graffiti has created across generations and nations of young people, society continues to be terrorized by it’s prevalence. Several attempts have been made by authorities to reduce and control the amount of graffiti but to no avail. In 1974, during Mayor Lindsay’s Anti-Graffiti law and task force, $10 million a year was being spent to reduce the surface covered by graffiti to just 50%. According to Lindsay’s task force, reducing graffiti to “a more acceptable level”(10% surface coverage) would require an estimated $24 million per year(Austin, 2001). A 1974 report in the New York Times, during the height of the War on Graffiti, quotes a Metropolitan Transit Authority officer saying that the anti-graffiti law passed “has proved no deterrent whatsoever”(Austin, 2001).
The powers that be continue to be defeated in the “War on Graffiti” as they fail to control the prolific scrawlings of rebellious, young, social deviants. This is due, in large part, to the approach that the authorities have taken. As a writer called Relic articulates in Bryan’s(1995) video, Graffiti Verite:
“Rather than to understand the problem and see why kids are doing it, they sit there and try to stop it... not knowing that the thing that fuels this...this kind of movement is the energy that the kids have. Now with society not giving these kids a different way, or a different form to express their energies and them just taking something away, their energies are gonna go into somethin else. With graffiti, it’s a positive energy that these kids are doing. Their putting their efforts into something beautiful to make something look nice. Now with the city taking it away from us and taking away our yards and not allowing us to do what we want to do, they’re sort of stopping a lot of kids from taking that energy and making it positive and these kids are turning their energy into something negative. They’re starting to go out there gang bangin’ cause they can’t kick back in their yards anymore”.
Speaking
to this same issue Tobin (1995) writes:
Instead of trying to
work with the youth who are doing the graffiti, the various politicians
have taken the classic stance and declared war on graffiti writers.
This approach is outdated and accomplishes little as far as fixing the
problems that motivate these kids to do graffiti in the first place.
This strategy only breeds resentment from the youth who perpetuate these
crimes. (p.1)
Most
of the tactics that law enforcement has used to try and deal with the graffiti
problem involve efforts to cleanup graffiti rather than deal with source
of it’s prevalence. There are several programs, which are funded
by city dollars, whose sole purpose is to paint over graffiti. However,
this is not a solution by any means as it becomes more of an invitation
to writers by providing a “blank canvas”, so to speak.
Tucker argues, in his
essay, Graffiti: Art and Crime:
Surely instead of spending so much money on graffiti clean up and on revention task forces, it would make sense for the money to be channeled into opportunities for youths to be educated about artistic process and learn about the arts through legal wall projects, funded by the city. Also it would educate the youths by giving them a creative outlet within their own community that would teach them about giving to the community and help it grow and prosper. (p.8)
These
kids obviously have something that they need to express and are determined
to do so. It is unrealistic to expect them to stop doing something
that not only serves a purpose in their development of identity, but it
is something that they are invested in and passionate about. The
more the authorities try and stop it, the more graffiti will exist as a
“problem” in their eyes. The creative energy that these youth have
is a valuable thing that can be an asset to their character development
as well as an asset to the whole of society if channeled in the right way.
Without the proper
guidance of healthy role models who are willing to relate to youth on their
level, adolescents are forced to develop their own set of values and way
of socially interacting. Riley (2001) says that for the disaffected
youth who has “street culture as their principal source of exposure to
values, adulthood comes early- an adulthood that misses appropriate opportunities
to solve many areas of the developmental stages that makes real adulthood
a successful achievement” (p.140). According to Hanna, Hanna &
Keys (1999), “one of the first things to recognize about defiant adolescents
is that often they have been deprived of people who can serve as models
of how to appropriately interact with and relate to others” (p.4).
Young people can successfully direct their energy toward positive, productive
goals if only they are given the opportunity to go through their process
of identity discovery in a healthy and supported way by people who can
understand them. Elikann(1999) says, “if young people at an early
age aren’t surrounded with interested parents, cohesive communities or
other positive role models who just fortunately are around, then we have
to make proactive responses to intervene with programs of mentors and people
to look up to”(p.203).
According to Flowers (1990), “non-institutional corrections are seen as more effective in treating and rehabilitating juvenile offenders, more humane, and more cost-efficient than placing juveniles in training schools and adult institutions” (p.185). Amdur, Davidson, Mitchell, & Redner(1990) conducted a study investigating the effectiveness of different alternatives treatments for delinquent adolescents, outside of the juvenile justice system. The authors note that “interventions with troublesome youth have swung from an emphasis on social treatment to a preference for punishment” (p.3). Therefore, they set up several different control samples to measure effectiveness of various form of treatment with troubled youth.
One of the interventions that Amdur, Davidson, Mitchell, & Redner (1990) found to be effective was called “Youth Advocacy” which was described as follows:
The Youth Advocacy intervention was based on a differential opportunity theory of delinquency. According to this theory, youth with few opportunities to gain access to desired objects through legitimate channels turn to illegitimate methods instead. In this intervention, the volunteer helps the youth identify goals and impediments to reaching them. Then together they plan a strategy for overcoming identified obstacles. The volunteer then tries to provide access to legitimate channels for meeting needs. (p.41)
The researchers discuss the significance of the therapeutic relationship regarding the effectiveness of this intervention and found that the interaction with the youth on their level provides the basis for developing the ability to relate.
In this study, the researchers asked the question, “does it matter who delivers the intervention?” They found that 19-20 year old college students were more able to be effective treatment agents with delinquents than older volunteers due to “reduced social distance”. Amdur, Davidson, Mitchell, & Redner(1990) said that “overprofessionalized staff or those trained in a restricted professional role often express ambivalence about entering the natural environment of delinquent youth” (p.239). In their study, the authors found that “it was essential to select change agents who were willing to become directly involved in the youth’s natural setting” (p.239).
Elikann(1999) writes about a successful intervention with a 14 year old socially defiant kid. This adolescent was approached by Molly Baldwin of ROCA, a youth services program in Chelsea, Massachusetts, whose method of reaching youth was through their own interests. She started a basketball gym program, for kids who like to play basketball, and used it as a way to develop a non-threatening relationship by approaching them with something they were interested in. This particular 14 year old boy had this to say about his experience:
Teachers would say, “you got detention because of this, you’re not going to pass because of this”. DSS says “you’ve got to do this because your mother dah da dah.” And opposed to- here was this one place in the world that was saying, “well, you know what....what do you want to do?”......And so I love to play basketball, so that was kind of the bait-and-switch and I really just came down once a week on Mondays to play basketball....We’d go down there just to play ball and really, over a course of time, she’d use that as a way to get to know me and to begin to develop a relationship with me. She’d start upping the ante in our conversations about my life and some decisions that I was making in my life or not making. (p.183)
It is the youth workers, who are capable and willing to interact with youth within and around the youths’ cultural world, that are most successful in reaching this population of young people.
The Arts Incentive Program (AIP), which was initiated at McLean Hospital in Belmont Massachusetts, provides opportunities for adolescents with various mental and behavior problems to interact with community-based youth workers through the arts (Fliegel, 200). Through innovative art therapy programming, the AIP involves adolescents in “youth-based activities that replicate the viable stage-appropriate healing elements of the therapeutic milieu” (p.83). They have found that “a clinical response to the adolescent’s own interests motivates recovery, as at-risk and beyond-risk adolescents are linked with community arts and youth development projects, where they acquire lifelong skills and a positive sense of self” (p.81). Fliegel(2000) notes:
There are those who perceive clinicians as condescending, pathologizing, authoritarian, and insensitive. Clinicians have limited contact with youth community arts centers, but youth development workers are in it for the long haul, as it is these mentors who consistently encounter teens’ problems with school, family, drugs, crime, and violence. Ironically youth workers rarely have clinical training, or even the benefit of clinical supervision. Clinicians and youth workers must be open to learning about the assets, attributes, and difficulties within each other’s organizations.......By linking the art world to the clinical setting, and providing clinical support to youth development programs, art therapists solidify an alliance between those committed to adolescent health, and maximize programmatic strengths in both circles. (p.84)
Adolescents are a difficult population for adults to approach with the intention of changing their behavior. Because of their sensitivity to authorities’ threat on their individuality, adolescents will often shutdown and close themselves off to adults in any kind of authoritative position. Fliegel(2000) writes, boredom, apathy, nonchalance: these are the hallmarks of the disenfranchised teenager. To demonstrate involvement or interest in the world violates the social code, which prohibits collaboration with untrustworthy adults” (p.85). In order for adults to be seen as trustworthy, they have to develop a relationship, which acknowledges and respects the youth’s reality. Hanna, Hanna, & Keys(1999) argue that “a counseling technique performed without a properly established empathic and trusting relationship seems to many defiant adolescents to be a threat to their integrity, and just another covert or overt attempt at manipulation” (p.3).
And
according to Fliegel (2000), “many adolescents anticipate that treatment
will be one more intolerable imposition by the same unfeeling adults whose
callousness has already brought them to the brink of annihilation” (p.82).
Similarly, in his work with adolescent criminals referred by the Massachusetts
Division of Youth Services, Newberger(1999) found that “not a few of these
kids were, as the term is used “hardened”. That’s to say that they
were familiar with therapists and jaded with people who professed interest
in helping them. Getting them to talk was no small task” (p.220).
In acknowledgment of this
troublesome obstacle in reaching adolescents, Esman(1983) writes:
Perhaps the most taxing problem in the treatment of the severely disturbed
adolescent is that of finding
a channel for the establishment of a therapeutic relationship.
Too old for the play techniques of early childhood, the adolescent
has not yet evolved the cognitive and self-observing capacities that will
permit him to use the free association approach of adult analytic therapy,
and is, in any case a frequently unwilling patient, oriented more to action
than to reflection as a means of reducing tension and warding off anxiety.
(p.141) Thus,
as it has been found, troubled adolescents require a special approach to
treatment, which fits within their realm of interest and allows for creative
self expression.
Effective therapists, regardless of their psychological orientation, must have the ability to speak the language of their patients’ inner world if they are to promote movement or growth within their patients’ psychic structures....This challenge of finding a mutually comprehensible and suitable language for therapy is particularly critical when working with adolescents. Words and formal language may not be fully developed in an adolescent, or heavy reliance on the part of the therapist just on words can turn off an adolescent since the very notion of words is so strongly associated with the adult/straight/authority world.....Art Therapy can serve as a universal language for the therapeutic process, and one that can be embraced by adolescents without having to surrender their limited but hard-won emerging individuation. (p.iii).
Linesch (1998) adds, “adolescence is a stage of development with unique difficulties that make psychotherapy very complex. Many of the struggles experienced by the adolescent involve conflicts of identity and self-expression. These conflicts can be made accessible for exploration through art productions in a way that they cannot through verbal expression” (p. ix). Landgarten(1981) agrees, based on her own experience, saying that “both the preconditions essential to adolescent character formation and the development tasks of adolescence may be worked upon through the art psychotherapy modality” (p.156).
Through the use of art directives, specific treatment goals can be translated into art tasks. This concept is at the core of the art therapy modality (Linesch, 1988). Linesch(1988) says, “with a thorough understanding of the adolescent stage of development, an accurate analysis of the defensive style and psychopathology of the particular client and an experienced appreciation of the art process, the art therapist can direct the adolescent’s progress toward improved intrapsychic functioning” (p.59).
The adolescent wages a battle against authority figures with the collaborative support of the group, the influence of which mitigates superego as well as social anxiety. Through transient identification with the central person of the group, or with the egos of its members, the individual is aided in separating out the projective component from objective fact. (p.210).
Several therapists have found that working with adolescents in a group therapy setting can be very beneficial. In Berkovitz’s(1972) book, Adolescents Grow in Groups, he puts together a group of authors who stress the importance of and promote the creation of more adolescent therapy groups. Irene Josselyn is quoted in this publication:
[The therapy group] becomes a significant arena for the adolescent in which to struggle through the confused issues that adolescence typically creates. Within this milieu it provides support against common enemies, guidelines for acceptable behavior, a forum in which to discuss issues that can be safely explored only with those who are equally unsure, and tolerance for uncertainties and inconsistencies concerning ultimate goals. (p.3)
Although the group model of therapy is effective for the adolescent population because of the group dynamic aspect of their psychological tendencies, Linesch(1988) finds that it is not so easy to rely on verbal therapeutic modalities in these scenarios. She found that “directing youngsters to discuss the here and now of group process is often very difficult in verbal therapy groups. The art process allows this kind of exploration to occur: diagrams, symbols and metaphors allow the adolescent to distance [him/]her self from the potential anxiety in this kind of task” (p.142).
In writing culture, it is common for a writer to belong to a “crew” of other writers who form a supportive group. Often times these crews come together to create a group piece, as a mural. Through this they learn to cooperate with one another and work together to create something with a collective message(Stowers, 1997). Hanna, Hanna, & Keys found that, “teaching kids to empathize with and help each other is a tremendously powerful tool that carries over and transitions into group therapy and everyday interactions...A therapeutic peer culture can be far more beneficial than any individual counselor can” (p.17).
The belief, held by some figures of authority, which views youth culture as a meaningless fad, fosters a sense of resentment among adolescents and results in their increased distance and resistance to adult influence and intervention. For young people who largely define their identity with regards to their peer group, the things in which they invest their time and energy, which make up their culture, are very much a part of who they are. In order for an adolescent within this culture to feel validated as an individual, he or she must feel that their affiliation to their respective peer group is respected and acknowledged as part of their own identity. Additionally, the particular cultural movement which the adolescent pledges his or her allegiance to must also be acknowledged as a valid cultural identity in and of itself, and not condescendingly viewed as a mere triviality.
In the case of graffiti, it is one example of a youth culture which has not only persisted over time, throughout generations, but has built a structure which provides youth with a focus for their passion and fosters dedication and development of skill. Graffiti, as a popular youth culture, has existed in the United States since the 1960’s(Austin, 2001). In discussing writing culture in New York in it’s early stages, Austin(2001) says that “the emerging writing culture institutionalized values of hard work, creativity, persistence, autonomy, and skill in ways that few educational and occupational avenues open to young people ever have” (p.52). In his discussion of the fame that writers strived to achieve through their prolific art expressions, Austin goes on to say that “fame was contingent upon long hours, hard work and dedication. In this way, acquiring writing fame has, ironically, offered a continuing means for urban young people to validate the liberal, meritocracy-based work ethic that had so starkly failed to produce the promised economic results for this group during the 1960’s and 1970’s” (p.52).
In Graffiti Verite 2, Bryan(1998) interviews Haze, a once prolific, illegal, graffiti artist in his days of adolescence who turned successful, legitimate, professional graphic designer in his later years:
“If you’re putting in work and you got the skills, you should find a way to get paid for your skills. This is the modern world......you gotta find a way to plug in and if you can plug in without sellin your soul and keep doing what you believe in then you’ve accomplished both things. Because if you’re sittin there goin, you know, fuck the system, you know, “I’m not gonna play by those rules ‘cause I don’t believe in it”, well, you might find yourself pretty lonely with your art. You gotta get real with the program. Develop your own program so that you can maintain. But still understand that this is how the world works and you’re not gonna be that productive if you’re on the outside looking in. You gotta get in the mix one way or another.”
Pursuing a career in art is one way that writers can focus their energy and talent into a socially acceptable venue. However, making money is not the only possible positive outcome of these kid’s talent and energy. The efforts that these youth put forth toward resisting authority and societal norms, if understood as social criticism, can be redirected to take shape as an asset to society in the form of social activism. Given the opportunity to reflect on their actions and understand the motivation behind them, young writers can evolve and mature into active members of society. They can come to see that they can actually make more of a difference in evoking change in society by participating within its norms and working to change the things they don’t agree with, rather than acting out against them from the outside and winding up in isolation.
Rather than to stunt the natural process of adolescent identity formation through rebellious activity by failing to see it’s purposes, it is more effective for the long term growth, therapeutic change and maturation of young people to make attempts at rechanneling this rebellious energy into constructive and socially acceptable outlets. It is unrealistic to expect teenagers to stop taking risks or challenging authority. It is realistic, however, for youth to learn how to channel their efforts through legitimate and productive means. Fliegel(2000) says that, “by acknowledging that risk-taking represents a way to structure identity, and that it is essential to the maturational process, one can join with the adolescent in exploring risks that promote health, resistance that promotes change, and a questioning of authority that incorporates self-discovery” (p.83).
If approached from this perspective and utilized as a therapeutic tool, graffiti art can become a source of reflection and individual development. Tucker quotes a writer named Coda as saying, “to pour your soul onto a wall and be able to step back and see your fears, your hopes, your dreams, your weaknesses, really gives you a deeper understanding of yourself and your own mental state” (p.7). The act of creating a work of art that that is fueled by frustration but offers insight into personal, inner psychological material becomes a form of sublimation and thus takes on positive attributes which instigate healthy transformation. Kramer (2001) articulates that “’sublimation’ designates processes whereby primitive urges, emanating from the id, are transformed by the ego into complex acts that do not serve direct instinctual gratification. In the course of this transformation, primitive behavior, necessarily asocial, gives way to activities that are ego-syntonic and are as a rule socially productive” (p.28).
Psychologist Dr. Doug Fayn (2000) feels that graffiti is, in itself, a sublimation. He says that “graffiti demonstrates condensation, displacement, timelessness as well as immediate impulse and its expression through graphic discharge. These are the hallmarks of the unconscious. Graffiti then becomes a sublimation via explosive artistic activity with the graphic ritualism replacing the wished-for prohibited or destructive act” (p.1). Although this “graphic ritualism” may be, for the artist, a positive way of channeling displaced energy, it is not necessarily, as Kramer puts it “socially productive”. Whether or not it is possible for one to achieve therapeutic growth and mental advancement from the act of writing illegal graffiti, which is socially unacceptable, it is more plausible and in effect more beneficial for an individual to experience sublimation through a venue that is socially acceptable. This way the individual is given the permission and the space to transform their energy into an act which is “socially productive”.
If contained within the right environment, which promotes therapeutic growth,
the graphic ritualism of graffiti, which breeds sublimation, can be focused
and contained within the framework of socially acceptable behavior. This
requires cooperation from the social community in working toward a viable
solution that can persist and meet the needs of all parties involved.
Provided that these adolescent outlaw-artists are given the opportunity
and venues to engage in a socially acceptable form of their art which fosters
therapeutic development, they can blossom into creative minds that will
be an asset to the flowering of our future society, rather than thorns
in the path along the way.
Prior to participating in the workshop, subjects fill out the Adolescent Treatment Outcome Module (ATOM) Baseline Assessment questionnaire. Upon completion of the art therapy group, after six weeks, subjects fill out the ATOM Follow-up Assessment questionnaire. A control group of adolescent graffiti offenders who do not participate in the art therapy group are also administered the baseline assessment test prior to the six week period and then the follow-up at the end of the six week period. Treatment effectiveness is determined, in part, by comparing pre and post scores of both the art therapy group participants and the members of the control group in a quantitative analysis. In addition, art therapy group subjects keep a journal, recording their thoughts, feelings and ideas resulting from their participation in the art therapy group. With subject’s written consent, the art therapy journals provide data for a qualitative analysis of the treatment outcomes.
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Art and crime. Retrieved October 19, 2002. www.graffiti.org/faq/tucker.html.
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