Chapter 1 offers an introduction to The Arts Therapies. It provides the remit of the book: to explore the arts therapies as a continuation, a development of ideas and ways of working which have had different forms and manifestations over centuries. It introduces the five different parts of the text and how they will reveal how the arts therapies have emerged in many parts of the world. Part II of the book reviews the different definitions of the arts therapies. Part III offers insights into different understandings and accounts of how the relationship between arts and therapy has developed. It considers international histories and developments revealing how, in a number of countries, art, music, drama and dance movement therapy have become recognised as formal disciplines and professions within existing health and care provision. Part IV examines the connections between the arts and discoveries and ideas emerging from sciences such as psychology, the fields of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and education. Three of the main areas that are brought together by much arts therapies theory and practice are looked at: the arts, the unconscious and play. Part V focuses on different aspects of the client–therapist relationship and how arts processes and art forms create new opportunities and reveal new aspects of this relationship. It reviews innovative approaches to the arts as therapy and to new opportunities for clients. This includes a consideration of ‘efficacy’: the ways in which change in the arts therapies can be understood, accounted for and communicated.