This is one of those posts in which my two worlds -- knitting and my work -- collide briefly.
In two knitting communities that I am a sometime member of, there are discussion threads on knitting as therapy, meaning more less in place of actual therapy. Von Franz wrote of knitting:
Everybody who has knitted or done weaving or embroidery knows what an agreeable effect this can have, for you can be quiet and lazy and also spin your own thoughts while working. You can relax and follow your fantasy and then get up and say you have done something! Also the work exercises patience...Only those who have done such work know of all the catastrophes which can happen -- such as losing a row of stitches just when you are decreasing! It is a very self-educative activity and brings out feminine nature. It is immensely important for women to do such work and not give it up in the modern rush. (The Feminine in Fairy Tales, Spring Publications, 1972, p. 40)
recognizing the value of handcrafts like knitting. And this makes a great deal of sense. Indeed, I read a post today by Dr. Smak about the meditative value of knitting which is the value that I see. And similarly with painting or writing or working in clay. They are all means for allowing us to surrender the monkey mind a bit, to allow to filter in some deeper part of ourselves which works on whatever it is that we are occupied with. But as therapeutic as these things can be, they are not in themselves therapy. Therapy puts into words the feelings and experiences and perceptions that can keep us from the life we want. Art, music, knitting, writing gives us means of expressing some of those same things, some ways of working with them transformatively or meditatively.
Which is not to say that therapy is what any painter or knitter or writer needs. Only that each can nourish the other in the process of expanding consciousness and developing our lives. My analysis is knit into every piece I have worked on during it. Dreams, interpretations, thoughts all became part of the fabric of what I made. Each enriching the other.