Art Therapy Master of Arts (MA)

Art therapy is an independent therapeutic method in the social-preventive and rehabilitative, as well as in the clinical-psychological and psychotherapeutic fields. The process seeks to reflect an inner-psychological form of experience in an artistic medium, for example a picture, a sculpture and/or a graphic and makes it possible to methodically and interventorily reorient and reorient forms of experience and social expression.

The extra-occupational four-semester, academically certified university course for art therapy at the SFU Vienna, which concludes with a Master of Arts after the fifth semester, is primarily aimed at social workers, social, special and curative educators, employees in social psychiatric services, life and social counsellors, as well as artists and visual educators, and nursing and clinical professions, such as animation nursing staff and gerontopsychiatric professions.

The university course Art Therapy MA with its previous curriculum is no longer offered from winter semester 2023/24. No new participants are accepted.

Admission requirements

• University entrance qualification or previous professional experience
• German language level C1
• One-page letter of motivation
• Curriculum vitae in tabular form
• Admission interviews
• Admission seminar

Where life destinies have become one-way streets, often only the image remains, which is symptomatic and symbolically groundbreaking. The SFU offers the course on a scientific basis from a practical point of view, which means working out the background of the disturbed or cancelled life patterns and images and making them accessible using artistic-practical methods.
Neurobiological and genetic, psychosocial and psychomotor foundations are therefore developed in the degree programme in order to be used in social and curative education, acute, rehabilitative and outpatient clinical professional fields, i.e. to be explored initially in an intensive treatment context under supervision.

High practical relevance

Students are brought into contact with clinical-rehabilitative practice right from the start and are supervised, i.e. accompanied, in this process. At the same time, they are theoretically trained in the fundamentals of problems that are susceptible to practical application. The idea is therefore to provide a seamless practice-supervision-theory programme that introduces practical, theoretical and self-reflective aspects.

The course is continuously accompanied by artistic, material-aesthetic-orientated and (psycho-)therapeutic self-experience, 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.

Curriculum for the five-semester Master’s programme (accredited):

• Curriculum_Art_therapy MA.pdf (in German)

4 semesters, with a degree in academic art therapy:
Total € 11,568.00 or € 2,892.00 per semester or € 482.00 per month (plus 2% processing fee)

5 semesters, with a Master of Arts degree:
Total € 14,460.00 or € 2,892.00 per semester or € 482.00 per month (plus 2% administration fee)

Admission fee: € 480

The lecture notes of the ULG Art Therapy can be found in the password-protected area Art Therapy – internal.

• 4 semesters: academic art therapist
• 5 semesters: Master of Arts, MA (accredited)

Past graduation ceremonies

• Graduation Ceremony 2025
• Graduation Ceremony 2024

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.

Master’s theses ULG Art Therapy (PDF, in German)
(as of July 2025)

• Conference 2025: Kunsttherapie in unsicheren Zeiten
• Conference 2024: Kunst & Imagination. Tagträume in der Kunsttherapie.
• Conference 2023: An der Schnittstelle von Kunst und Psychotherapie
• Conference 2022: Kunst trifft Psyche
• Conference 2021: Die Psyche als Ort der Gestaltung – Wenn Bilder zu Bewusstsein kommen

Some works by our art therapy students:

Books

• Ich-Werdung – Wie das Bewusstsein die Welt berührt by Karl-Heinz Menzen
• YOGA-NIDRA: Ascent into the Subconscious by Nadeshda Stuerzebecher
• An der Schnittstelle von Kunst und Psychotherapie by Georg Franzen & Karl-Heinz Menzen
• Psychosentheorien in der Psychoanalyse by Anatol Möller
• Kreativität, Ästhetik und das Unbewusste by Marie-Theres Haas
• Holzskulpturen selbst gemacht and Website by Vinko Nino Jaeger
• Kunsttherapeutische Stichworte by Manfred Blohm, Katja Watermann
• Die Archäologie der Kunsttherapie by Karl-Heinz Menzen
• A Song in Praise of Beauty by Leslie De Melo
• Zur Psychodynamik kreativen Gestaltens by Georg Franzen, Ruth Hampe an Monika Wigger
• Das Vor- und Unbewusste – Im Zentrum der inneren Bilder by Karl-Heinz Menzen
• Drei auf einer Bank by Karl-Heinz Menzen
• Das Symptom als Bild by Karl-Heinz Menzen
• Die Auswirkung kunsttherapeutischer Interventionen auf die Ressourcen „Selbstmanagement“, „Selbstwirksamkeitserwartung“ und „Sinnerleben“ bei stationären, alkoholabhängigen PatientInnen by Jutta Dennstedt
• Intermediale Kunsttherapie – Problementdeckung durch das Verkörpern von Nachtträumen mittels Fotografie by Rinata Güttlein
• Selected Publikationen (PDF) by art therapy lecturers

Magazines & Journals

• Catalogue femina creativa : female perspectives on arts
• Journal Musik-, Tanz- und Kunsttherapie
• Journal Kunst & Therapie
• DGKT-Journal

Videos

• Kunsttherapie – Ansätze und Berufsfelder
• Perspektiven der Kunsttherapie
• Interview with Prof. Menzen Was ist Kunsttherapie

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