정신 질환에 대한 기록은 고대 그리스 시대부터 찾아볼 수 있다. 그러나 그에 대한 과학적이고 합리적인 연구가 이루어진 것은 정신분석학(psychoanalysis)이 발전했던 19세기 말부터이다. 그리고 이 때부터 인간 심리와 정신 질환에 대한 새로운 해석이 시작될 수 있었다(이은주, 2009: 63). 인간의 감정, 무의식과 이미지(image) 사이의 관련성에 관심을 기울인 정신분석학의 발전은 미술적 표현이 개인의 내면세계에 대해 명백한 증거를 제공한다는 믿음을 형성시켰다. 20세기 중반에 이르면 미술 제작 활동은 정신적 성장과 변화, 재활을 북돋을 수 있는 것으로 여겨지게 되었고 점차 미술치료의 영역이 출연하기 시작했다. 이후 미술이 감정의 정화와 승화를 통해 외상의 경험을 완화하여 심리적 균형을 회복시키며, 분열된 자아를 통합하여 내면의 전환을 일으킴으로써 치유의 기회를 준다는 사실이 인정되었다(강미화, 2007: 352-356).
Yayoi Kusam is an artist who sublimated her psychiatric problem named obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD into art and maximized the healing powers of arts. Her innumerable paintings, drawings, sculptures, installation works, engravings, pottery, and the publication of 20-odd novels and a collection of poetical works, are attributed to her OCD. For Kusama, art activity is self-therapy itself. Kusama immersed herself in her artworks to render the hallucination she saw, and to overcome her anxiety and fear thereof and get free from that. Kusama, however, did not stay depict the hallucination and symptoms of OCD as they were, but did create comfortable and familiar images using her imagination and did elevate those into artistic symbols which have universal and spiritual significance. She also persisted in laying herself open to the fear for hallucination by using the method of repetition and accumulation in the work course, and thus attenuated the jitters. Meanwhile, the cause of the fear dissipates by making phalluses, an object of hatred and fear, soft sculptures, and then she becomes a creator who produces and dominates those. The Kusama's art, finally, beyond individualistic domain, wins the social meaning such as free rein, love and peace, which helps heal the wounds of the public in modern society. Kusama rather used OCD working to her as shortcoming so that she detached herself from the suppressive reality artificially comprised of. She embraces and sublimates into art many things that can not be accepted in the real world, and so cures herself and heals others. As her expression, Kusama's work is 'art-medicine'. Through this study confirming the process of healing done in Kusama's artworks, I can reconfirm the fact that arts have deep affinity with mind, body, and spirit, and that we can cope with the problems and conflicts related to the realm of all those three through art activity.