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Myra Levick
Myra Levick Myra F. Levick has made considerable contributions to the field of art therapy; and a study of her work is crucial to understanding the early development of this field. Levick developed a graduate Art Therapy program at Hahnemann Graduate School, published many books and articles, was integral in the founding of the American Art Therapy Association, and developed an art therapy assessment for the art therapy staff at Miami-Dade School District.

Early Education
Levick showed an interest in art at a very young age. She was accepted to a high school in Philadelphia that had a concentration in art; and her parents supported her in attending this school even though it was not close to home. Levick intended on enrolling at Moore College of Art, but her plans changed when she got married. Instead, she worked while her husband went to medical school and she planned on attending school when he finished. In 1958, at 34 years of age and with three children, Levick enrolled at Moore College of Art. She graduated in five years with a Bachelor's of Fine Arts in Painting. However, Levick felt that she did not want to commit herself to the isolation of painting and decided to pursue a Master's degree in Art History. She was accepted to Bryn Mawr, but she had another sudden change of plans. Levick saw a job posting at Moore College for a graduate student to practice art therapy at Albert Einstein Medical Center. Levick interviewed for the job and quickly realized that art therapy was just the thing she wanted to do. She got the job and happily declined her acceptance to Bryn Mawr in favor of a new career.

Training and Graduate School
In 1963 Levick began working at Albert Einstein Medical Center. Levick worked on a 29-bed inpatient unit for individuals with moderate neurosis to severe psychosis where she was responsible for running art groups for the patients. As part of her job she was also required to attend weekly lectures on topics such as abnormal development, psychoanalytic theory, and child psychiatry. The unit was open, meaning that the staff did not use restraints and the doctors used few sedatives. The philosophy of the unit was that patients and staff would process regression, crisis, or disruptions together. If a patient did not show up for an art therapy session the group would simply pick up and move the session into that patients room. Levick was an artist but had no experience with psychology. She described the four years she worked at the Albert Einstein Medical Center as similar to the first five years of life in terms of rate of growth. She once asked her boss why he had chosen to hire her and he cited the fact that she was a girl scout troop leader as a contributing factor, because it showed that she cared about people and would go above and beyond. She learned a great deal through her work, especially about the psychological implications of the creative process. She began to publish articles, with her colleagues, on the work she did with art therapy.

Advanced Education
Levick's boss at Albert Einstein Medical Center encouraged her to go back to school to attain a Master's degree. She enrolled in Temple University and graduated with a Master's degree in adolescent psychology and education. Much later, after a successful teaching career, and at the age of 50, Levick returned to school to get her P.h.D. She applied and was accepted to Bryn Mawr where she published her research on children's drawings in the journal Arts in Psychotherapy in 1980. After completing her coursework, Levick traveled to England to work with Anna Freud at Hampstead Clinic. She would write her dissertation on the art therapy work she did there with children. She studied manifestations of defense mechanisms in drawings and published her dissertation under the title They Could Not Talk and So They Drew. The framework for defining the graphic indicators of development was psychoanalytic because she was interested in how ego mechanisms of defense reflected adaptive or maladaptive patterns of behavior. She was also interested in how graphic indicators reflected developmental stages or how unresolved conflict reflected fixation on certain developmental stages.

Contributions to the Field of Art Therapy
Levick started her career at a groundbreaking time for art therapy; and the field made dramatic advances thanks to the contributions of many early art therapists. Levick contributed to the field through the development of a graduate program, a successful teaching career, the publication of multiple books, the formation of the American Art Therapy Association, and the development of an art therapy assessment for the Miami-Dade School District.

Teaching Career
Levick's teaching career began in 1965 when she began lecturing at Moore College of Art. After the first year she was invited by the Dean of Moore College to teach an “Introduction to Art Therapy” course. The course was a popular elective but Levick was not invited to teach it again the following year. Instead she took a job as the Activities Director at Hahnemann Mental Health Center, and a position at Hahnemann Graduate School as a senior instructor; where she was tasked with developing a graduate art therapy program. In 1967 Hahnemann accepted its first six art therapy students. There was no national art therapy association at this time, so Levick developed the curriculum from the writings of Elinor Ulman, Margaret Naumburg, Edith Kramer, and Hanna Kwiatkowska. She also invited guest speakers such as Ulman, Kwiatkowska, Naumburg, Kramer, and Harriet Wadeson to lecture for her students. In the winter of 1967, the director of the art therapy department at Hahnemann died and Levick assumed his position. The department continued to expand and in 1975 they changed the name of the department to The Creative Arts Therapy Program in order to include dance, movement, and music therapy. This was possible because the department had received the only National Institute of Mental Health grant to train music, art, and movement therapists. They hired more staff members to teach the new modalities. At this time Levick was promoted to full professor, this made her the first woman in her department with the title of full professor. The department developed a relationship with Anna Freud and sent students to study at her clinic in England. The program was extremely successful and each year it continued to grow. In 1986 Levick resigned and moved to Florida, but she would continue her work by developing an assessment for the Miami-Dade School District.

American Art Therapy Association
Levick began to attend American Psychiatric Association meetings with her colleagues where they began to discuss the need for a national art therapy association. In 1968 they held an organizational meeting at Hahnemann to discuss the possibility of forming the American Art Therapy Association. They formed a committee to develop a constitution which included Don Jones, Robert Ault, Felice Cohen, Elinor Ulman, and Myra Levick. A year later, they held another meeting in Louisville, Kentucky where the constitution was adopted and the American Art Therapy Association officially came into being. Levick was elected the first president.

Levick Emotional and Cognitive Art Therapy Assessment
In 1986 Levick began to develop an art therapy assessment at the request of Janet Bush, director of the Miami-Dade Clinical Art Therapy Program for Exceptional Children. The assessment would be used by the art therapy department in the Miami-Dade School District. In 1989 Levick had completed a first draft; the assessment, called the Levick Emotional and Cognitive Art Therapy Assessment, scores cognitive and emotional development as they are manifested in children's drawings. The theoretical constructs that Levick used in the assessment were based on Piaget and Freud's theories of mechanisms of defense. Levick's career was heavily influenced by psychoanalytic theory and she spent a considerable amount of time studying ego defense mechanisms. She was also influenced by Margaret Naumburg's dynamically oriented approach. In 1998 a research project was conducted in Palm Beach School District to collect data in norming the LECATA.

Artwork
Levick's media of choice is oil paint, although many of her paintings are also mixed media. Levick wrote in 1996 that she also enjoyed clay, pastels, knitting, needlepoint and sewed many of her own clothes. Her paintings have been displayed at the Boca Branch of the National League of American Pen Women. She has won various awards for her work and two of her paintings have also been published in books by Bruce Moon. One piece was an oil paint and mixed media titled “DU IT”, which represents art, music, and dance. The other was a watercolor on rice paper titled “Women in Israel”.

Books by Myra Levick
Levick published her research in articles while she worked at Albert Einstein Medical Center. In the 1970's she became the editor of Art Psychotherapy Journal. She also published several books, including They Could Not Talk and So They Drew (1983), which is the book that came out of her dissertation. Mommy, Daddy, Look What I'm Saying (1986) is a book that outlines typical developmental stages and the graphic indicators that go with them. Her stages include scribbling, word and shape formation, sentence-pictures, and fact-fantasy. She also discusses warning signs that art therapists, teachers, or parents can look for to determine atypical development. Her most recent book was Levick Emotional and Cognitive Art Therapy Assessment: A Normative Study.