The story of how the MARI^® developed begins with Joan Kellogg (Registered Art Therapist, 1974; Master of Arts in Psychology in Counseling, 1978), the creator and director of the MARI^® (Mandala Assessment Research Institute). Joan began her professional career in the arts by studying painting with Liz Whitney Quizard who had been a student of Morris Louise of Washington, D.C. Both artists identified themselves as "colorists" and abstract painters. Within ten years, she was involved in approximately eight juried and invitational shows.

However, as Joan states, "I began to think of teaching, and I read a lot of Carl Jung's work...And I began to paint in the form of mandalas." Drawing a daily mandala, Jung believed that the Unconscious could be revealed. Influenced by his work, Joan's conversion of using mandalas as a therapeutic tool began to emerge. Guided by her belief, Joan began her journey into the clinical world.

In 1969, Joan was invited to attend psycho-synthesis meetings and lectures on new research which were presented by primary investigators, among them Stanislav Grof, MD. In this same year, her interests changed somewhat after reading about the concepts of the newly emerging field of Art Therapy. She went, with portfolio in hand, to a nearby institution, Christian Sanatorium in Wyckoff, NJ, to learn how to explore training in this field. Dr. Richard Rosendale, Director, invited her to "learn through doing." As a volunteer within the Occupational Therapy Department, she began her own educational process in familiarizing herself with how various disorders were mirrored in art. Joan states, "it was here that art therapy with the mandala began for me".

Between the years of 1969-1977, Joan, with a singular focus, worked on the relation between art therapy and the mandala while she was employed at St. Joseph's Hospital in Paterson, NJ. At the invitation of Stanislav Grof, MD, Chief of Psychiatric Research, she became a consultant to the Art Therapy Research Project at the Maryland Psychiatric Center, Catonsville, MD. In this capacity, she used the mandala on subjects in drug assisted psychotherapy, pre- and post-treatment. Research subjects included alcoholics, the cancer-stricken, neurotics, and professional training candidates. In addition, Joan initiated a research project at the Cortical Function Laboratory at Johns Hopkins Hospital using the mandala as an indicator of physiological and/or psychological change in the treatment of disorders. Through the years Joan had a private practice in which she served as a consultant to clinicians in projective testing with the mandala.

Through Joan's intuitive and creative process of interpreting mandalas, patterns of symbols began to emerge. Her genius made the wonderful leap of placing those patterns into a system of assessment. Aligning these symbols with specific stages comprises the system known as The Great Round.

In 1977, Joan developed a projective test titled the "Joan Kellogg Mandala Card Test," based on experiences with Mandala art products. Research was conducted in various clinical settings with this test. She endeavored to measure changes, pre- and post-treatment, along with conventional psychological tests. In 1980, Joan published her Master's thesis, with modifications, culminating in her opus, Mandala: Path of Beauty. Since 1987, courses in Mandala Assessment using the MARI^® technique have been taught by certified MARI^® instructors, and research into its many applications continue today. 

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