Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1
َArt Department, Faculty of Art Islamic Azad University Central Tehran Branch
2
Full Professor Department of Art Facultu of Art Islamic Azad University Central Tehran Branch
3
Full Professor Department of Psychiatry Faculty of Medicine Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences Tehran Iran
4
Full professor Department of Philosophy of Art Ha. C., Islamic Azad University Hamedan Iran
10.30465/ps.2026.54835.1836
Abstract
This article, adopting a theoretical approach grounded in Foucauldian discourse analysis, examines the conceptual foundations of feminist art therapy. Within Michel Foucault’s framework, discourse is not merely a collection of language and concepts, but a truth-producing system through which power/knowledge relations construct subjects, bodies, and therapeutic norms. From this perspective, therapy in classical approaches often functions as a disciplinary technology, and through mechanisms of normalization, stabilizes the treatable subject within the truth regime of mental health. In contrast, feminist art therapy, with its emphasis on women’s lived experience, embodiment, and suppressed narratives, creates the possibility of resistance against this dominant subjectification. By posing the question of how feminist art therapy, within a Foucauldian discourse-analytic framework, redefines therapy as a field of resistance, this article demonstrates that in this approach, art, as a discursive and cultural practice, goes beyond being an instrument of individual healing and becomes a space for the representation of the body, the production of alternative narratives, and the reclamation of agency for the female subject. The theoretical findings of the study indicate that feminist art therapy, in a Foucauldian reading, defines therapy not as a reading, defines therapy not as a return to normativity, but as a multilayered process of resistance, meaning-making, and the transformation of the dominant truth regime.
Keywords
Subjects
