Clinical Art Therapy MA (CE)

The part-time university course Clinical Art Therapy MA (CE) is aimed at those interested in art therapy who can demonstrate a bachelor’s degree (or an equivalent degree comprising at least 180 ECTS credits or completed training in an artistic, educational, social or health profession at NQR/EQR level 6) and who wish to work in the future with visual arts and creative methods, for example in social, special and therapeutic education, rehabilitation and social psychiatry.

Admission to the 2025/26 winter semester via lateral entry is available subject to individual arrangement. For further information, please write to: kunsttherapie@sfu.ac.at

The next course starts in the winter semester 2026/27 (October 2026). The application period for the 2026/27 winter semester runs from 1 March 2026 to 30 June 2026.

Application and admission to the course Clinical Art Therapy MA (CE)

The online application is made via the SFU application tool.

Required application documents:

• Proof of a completed bachelor’s degree (or an equivalent degree comprising at least 180 ECTS credits or completed training in an artistic, educational, social or health profession at NQR/EQR level 6)
• Proof of at least two years of professional experience in the relevant subject-specific field
• One-page letter of motivation
• Curriculum vitae
• Application-recognition.docx (in German; if corresponding examinations and academic achievements are available)

Compulsory admission procedure:

• Two admission interviews
• Admission seminar
• Presentation of aesthetic and artistic interests

For enrolment on the university course, both the admissions interviews and the admissions seminar must be successfully completed.

Information and contact

• Application period for the 2026/27 winter semester: 1 March 2026 to 30 June 2026
• Application procedure: Submission of application documents via the SFU application tool
• If you are interested in general information about the Master’s programme, please contact kunsttherapie@sfu.ac.at or take part in the next info event.
• If you have any questions regarding a possible admission, please submit your CV and your degree certificates.

Art therapy interventions and forms of expression can be used to treat emotional, psychological and social problems. Art therapy is based on the assumption that artistic expression is a non-verbal form of communication and helps to express, process and understand inner feelings and conflicts. The training therefore involves working out the background to disturbed or cancelled life patterns and images and making these accessible using practical artistic methods.

High practical relevance

Students are brought into contact with clinical-rehabilitative practice right from the start and are supervised in this process in a practical manner. At the same time, various basic principles and problems in different fields of practice are developed.

The course is continuously accompanied by artistic, material-aesthetic-orientated and (psycho-)therapeutic self-awareness, which can be seen as a further basis in the training process. With this art therapy programme, the Sigmund Freud Private University contributes to the intensification of artistic, psychotherapeutic and artistic practice-oriented art therapy in Austria.

Graduates of the ULG in Clinical Art Therapy are therefore qualified to work in the health and social sector – whether in outpatient, day-care or inpatient clinical facilities, in areas of health prevention, social counselling or in curative education and psychosocial institutions.

Curriculum of the six-semester Master’s programme (valid from WS 2024/25, accredited):

• Curriculum Clinical Art Therapy MA (CE) (in German)

6 semesters, with a Master of Arts (Continuing Education) degree:
Total € 18,030.00 or € 3,005.00 per semester or € 510.85 per month (plus 2% processing fee)

• An admission fee of € 480 is payable at the time of enrolment.

Contact Finance and Controlling:
Mail: ptw-accounting@sfu.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 798 40 98 304
Opening and telephone hours: Mon-Thu: 10:00 – 15:00 / Fri: 10:00 – 15:00 (Fridays only available by telephone)
Address: Freudplatz 1, 3rd floor, room 3002

Winter semester 2025/26

VVZ VIE-KKT MA (CE) B 1.Semester WiSe 2025+26.pdf
VVZ VIE-KKT MA (CE) A 3.Semester WiSe 2025.pdf

The scripts of the ULG Clinical Art Therapy can be found in the password-protected area:
Art Therapy – internal

As part of the programme, students complete an internship of 500 hours. This gives them the opportunity to gain a variety of insights into art therapy work in different institutions. We recommend starting the internship in the second semester of the programme and getting to know different institutions.

Liste – Praktikastellen ULG Klinische Kunsttherapie (PDF, in German)

• Einrichtungen Wiener Neustadt

• Contact – Teaching Art Therapy (PDF, in German)

• 6 semesters: Master of Arts (Continuing Education) / MA (CE)

Graduates

Since 2015, 142 graduates have completed the university course in art therapy and have since been shaping creative development processes in various professional fields.

Liste der Masterarbeiten ULG Kunsttherapie MA (PDF, in German)
(as of July 2025)

Info events

• Next art therapy info event

Graduation ceremony

• TBA

Past conferences

Art Therapy Conference 2024: “Art & Imagination. Daydreams in art therapy.”

Some works by our art therapy students:

• Catalogue femina creativa : female perspectives on arts / Exhibiton 25.–27.09.2024, SFU Vienna / Marie-Theres Haas & Melanie Heckl (eds.)
• Book At the Interface of Art and Psychotherapy by Georg Franzen & Karl-Heinz Menzen
• Book Psychosentheorien in der Psychoanalyse by Anatol Möller
• Book Creativity, Aesthetics and the Unconscious by Marie-Theres Haas (co-leader ULG Art Therapy)
• Book Holzskulpturen selbst gemacht und Website by Vinko Nino Jaeger
• Book Kunsttherapeutische Stichworte by Manfred Blohm, Katja Watermann (ed.)
• Journal Musik-, Tanz- und Kunsttherapie, with contributions by Karl-Heinz Menzen, Georg Franzen and Karl Hoermann, among others
• DGKT-Journal – German Society for Artistic Forms of Therapy
• Book The Archaeology of Art Therapy by Karl-Heinz Menzen
• Website of Eva Wolfram Ertl, group and psychoanalyst, artist
• Book A Song in Praise of Beauty by Leslie De Melo
• Book Zur Psychodynamik kreativen Gestaltens by Georg Franzen, Ruth Hampe and Monika Wigger
• Selected publications by art therapy lecturers
• Book Das Vor- und Unbewusste – Im Zentrum der inneren Bilder by Karl-Heinz Menzen
• Book Three on a Bench by Karl-Heinz Menzen
• Book The symptom as an image by Karl-Heinz Menzen
• Magazine Art & Therapy
• Video Art therapy – approaches and professional fields
• Video Perspectives on art therapy
• Interview with Prof Menzen What is art therapy?

• Cathedral Museum
• Gallery Gugging
• Caritas Archdiocese of Vienna

University Programme Clinical Art Therapy, MA (CE)
Faculty of Psychotherapy Science
Sigmund Freud Private University Vienna
Freudplatz 3, Room 301
1020 Vienna
kunsttherapie@sfu.ac.at