The Arts in Psychotherapy, Vol. 20, pp. 213-222, 1993 Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.

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LEARNING ABOUT FEELINGS: THE ROLE OF

THERAPY TRAINING?

DAVID EDWARDS, B.A. (Hans), Dip. A.T., R.A.Th.*

I would like to begin sharing my thoughts about supervision in relation to the training of art therapists by quoting from the recently revised “Core Course Requirements” for the postgraduate training of art therapists as recognized by the British Association of Art Therapists (BAAT, 1992a).’ At the start of this d~ument it is stated that, “Art Therapy is a form of psychotherapy and its training should be firmly rooted in psychotherapeutic concepts.” In this context the term “psychotherapeutic” is understood to mean, “ . * . the engagement in a therapeutic alliance be- tween therapist and client and the interpersonal rela- tionship that is central to this process.”

The principal aim of the training to be offered through the postgraduate Diploma in Art Therapy courses, including the one I have responsibility for, is, therefore, “. . . to enable graduates to undertake the clinical practice of Art Therapy in which visual art and the process of making images play a central role in the context of the psychotherapeutic relationship.” To achieve this, students are required to develop, and demonstrate they have acquired, the capacity for self- awareness and self-reflection as well as the under- standing of theory and the intellectual and practical skills necessary to practice in a range of clinical or psychotherapeutic settings. What I will seek to argue

SUPERVISION IN ART

in this article is that supervision has a vital role to play in bringing together these different forms of learning and, in the process, in helping the students begin to develop a professional identity for themselves.

In the Beginning

The process of training artists in the therapeutic application of art tends to be a complex and demand- ing business for all concerned, including those re- sponsible for delivering this training. In practice, an art therapy training involves students acquiring a knowledge and understanding of the self, the client and of the nature of psy~hothem~utic relationships as mediated through art and its processes. The emphasis hereisona“. . . linking of theoretical and experi- ential studies with clinical experience” (BAAT, 1992a).

The nature of much of the learning necessary in order to even begin to do this, be it in lectures, su- pervision or training groups, tutorials, workshops or while on placement, makes enormous demands upon a student’s intellectual and emotional resources, de- mands intensified all the more by the relatively brief duration of the current training courses. This, together with the demanding process of linking theory to prac-

?This article is an amended version of a paper presented at the Second European Arts Therapies Education--Our Professional Identity

Conference-hosted by the Hogescholen, Netherlands, October 1992.

*David Edwards is Course Leader, Postgraduate Diploma in Art Therapy Course, University of Sheffield, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, Department of Psychiatry, 16 C~~mont Crescent, Sheftield, United Kingdom.

‘The revised Core Course requirements agreed to at the 1992 BAAT AGM replace those previously agreed to by the then training colleges

and BAAT in 1978. The thinking behind this change is outlined in the document (BAAT, 1989). For a more detailed discussion of this and

other issues regarding the development of art therapy training in the UK, see Wailer, 1991, Part V.

213

DAVID EDWARDS

tice, slowly, or sometimes all too quickly, transforms the sense of nervous anticipation and excitement ex- perienced by students at the beginning of training into waves of anxiety, confusion, uncertainty, vulnerabil- ity and helplessness.

The struggle to integrate seemingly complex and contradictory theories, together with difficult or pow- erful emotional responses to patients, institutions or unresolved internal conflicts may be experienced as threatening to overwhelm the beginning art therapist. As a consequence, the expectation most students have at the beginning of their training of gaining a clear understanding of the theory and practice of art therapy can, and very often does, come to feel uncomfortably like a promise made but not fulfilled.

In an article (Edwards, 1992, p. 5) published in INSCAPE, The Journal of the British Association of Art Therapists, I put forward the view that this dis- comfort may find expression in a number of different ways. During training it may take the form of anger directed toward tutors or placement supervisors for appearing either not to offer or to be withholding a clearly defined role for the student to adopt, that is, a role defined by specified skills and techniques learned and practiced during training. In those situations where the scope of art therapy is not very well under- stood, the need for a clearly defined role is perhaps experienced all the more acutely given the external as well as internal expectations involved. It is, of course, very unfair to expect anyone as yet unfamiliar with the role of art therapist, as are students beginning their placements or recently qualified art therapists, to offer a definition of that role, and yet 1 am aware that this is sometimes the expectation. I am also aware that angry or guilty feelings may emerge as a conse- quence, particularly when the student or neophyte art therapist fears they will be harshly judged or even punished when difficulties or problems arise.

For example, possibly one of the most important, but also problematic, things students begin to learn when they embark on a therapeutic training such as that offered by the course that I teach is that there may be many reasons, not all of which they may be con- scious of, as to why they wish to become art thera- pists, other than altruism. These may include the need to be seen as a caring person, projected dependency needs, a desire to understand one’s own difficulties, or voyeurism (Edwards, 1984). It is likely that some of these will prove to be obstacles to effective thera- peutic work if the student remains entirely unaware of them. That students acquire some self-awareness re-

garding their own needs and difficulties is therefore crucial if they are to help rather than hinder or harm their clients. Moreover, this self-awareness or self- consciousness on the part of the student, although often resisted, is an obligation that makes, as Kramer (199 1) has observed, “. . . the difference between a social encounter and a therapeutic one.” Kramer has also wisely noted that,

The novel idea which supervision has to get across is that therapy is not so much about try- ing to influence the patient, as seeing in which ways the patient is influencing the therapist.

The question to be faced by those who have the responsibility for training artists in the therapeutic ap- plication of art is, How might such difficulties be worked with constructively? If the aim of an art ther- apy training is to help students relate therapeutically to clients, how might this be achieved? Although it might be argued, not unreasonably, that each compo- nent of the training courses has a role to play in help- ing students do this, and to continue doing this after qualification, it is usually in supervision that this issue is most directly addressed.

Supervision and Training

On the training courses currently running in the UK, students are involved in two separate, but com- plementary, forms of supervision. For students on the course that I teach, this involves supervision offered by placement supervisors during the period of time they spend in clinical practice (currently a minimum of 60 days) and the college-based group supervision given by course staff. The main focus of this article is upon the latter, although much of what I note is com- mon to both.

Before proceeding to describe the role and function of supervision in the training of art therapists it would be helpful to distinguish between these two forms of supervision.

The most obvious distinction to be made is that the former is on-site and takes place in a variety of settings, including schools, psychiatric hos- pitals, special hospitals and, increasingly, in a range of community based services to specific client groups such as children or the elderly. The supervision offered by placement supervi-

SUPERVISION IN ART THERAPY TRAINING 215

3.

4.

sors will be on an individual basis in contrast to the supervision groups led by course staff. Although the majority of placement supervisors tend to be art therapists, not all are. A very important distinction to be made is that although placement supervisors do have a re- sponsibility to meet the training needs of the student, their primary responsibility is to the clients the student is working with. Although there is clearly some area of overlap between the responsibilities of course tutors and place- ment supervisors, the primary responsibil- ity course tutors have is for each student’s learning.

The purpose of the supervision groups I lead is to assist students with their learning while on placement. As such, the main focus of these groups is upon is- sues, feelings and images arising from the placement situation as a whole, including the students’ relation- ship with their placement supervisor. A secondary, but not unimportant function of these groups is that they should give students a clear understanding of the importance of supervision from the outset of their careers. This view is one endorsed by the British As- sociation of Art Therapists in the Association’s “Prin- ciples of Professional Practice,” which states that,

It is in the interests of art therapists to seek regular clinical supervision, ideally within the work place. This may take the form of individ- ual or group sessions conducted preferably by an experienced art therapist. (BAAT, 1985)*

Why Supervision?

One of the central reasons why supervision is in- vested with such importance, both during training and after qualification, is that whether we are just begin- ning, or are art therapists with many years experience, our first concern should be that we do not harm those we seek to help (Edwards, 1989, p. 175). In addition, it is also essential that if art therapists are to acquire

and develop the skills and experience necessary to help rather than harm clients, ways must be found to continually clarify and refine our practice. We need, as the psychotherapist Robert Hobson has com- mented, “. . . to go on learning how to learn-about others, about relationships, about ourselves” (1985, p. 206).

High quality supervision is also vital, particularly during training and in the period immediately follow- ing qualification, because it seems that, in order to practice and survive in the kinds of difficult situations many art therapists find themselves working in, it is important for ways of coping to be found that are not defensive or destructive. Common anxieties and dif- ficulties often experienced by therapists, particularly though not exclusively by those as yet unfamiliar with the role, frequently focus around feelings of not being good enough for the task of helping. Therapists can, and do, defend themselves from such uncomfortable feelings by distancing themselves emotionally from contact with patients or clients or by investing enor- mous effort in attempting to become the all-knowing, all-seeing, ever-effective professional they imagine they could or should be. Although we may try our best to meet the needs of those we work with, few therapists are entirely able to transcend the ordinary human failings to which most of us are prone. It can, therefore, be immensely helpful, though possibly also distressing, to share the fantasies we may have about our ability to help others without fear of being judged a failure or incompetent. That these fantasies may be extremely powerful and potentially destructive invests the issue of the availability of supervision for art ther- apists with considerable ethical importance (Edwards, 1989, p. 176).

I intend to return to the issue of how these diffi- culties may be addressed within the context of an art therapy training later in this article. Before doing so, however, I pose the question, What is supervision?

What Is Supervision?

Although art therapists in the United Kingdom have begun to pay an increasing amount of attention

‘Despite this advice, it is interesting to note that according to the most up to date statistics available (BAAT/MSF, 1990) only 60.3% of BAAT

Members receive regular supervision. Of these, 47.6% received this on an individual basis, 26.8% on a group basis and 26.8% received a

mixture of individual and/or group supervision. 38.5% of the art therapists who replied to the questionnaire from which these statistics were taken stated that they received no regular

supervision or support. Given the stresses of therapeutic work, this percentage is worrying. On the reasons given for this, several respondents

to the questionnaire commented that supervision was not offered or available at work and they could not afford external supervision.

DAVID EDWARDS

to the nature and quality of the supervision they give or receive,3 as yet very little has been published on the supervision of art therapists (Case & Dalley, 1992; Edwards, 1989). What little has been published on this subject has very largely been written by art therapists working in North America (Durkin, Perach, Ramseyer AL Sontag (1989); Fish (1989); Marion & Felix (1979); Wilson, Riley & Wadeson (1984).

What, as art therapists, we know about supervision has been largely drawn from and influenced by the supervision we ourselves have received, typically and traditionally provided by more experienced col- leagues belonging to professions other than art ther- apy, or the much more substantial body of literature and research concerned with the supervision of psy- choanalysts, psychotherapists, counsellors and mem- bers of other helping professions such as social work or nursing.4 Helpful though much of the extensive literature on supervision may be, a need clearly exists for further research into the supervision of art thera- pists. In particular we need to further our understand- ing of the nature and function of clinical supervision for art therapists at various stages of their professional development. My own research in this area seeks to address issues relevant to this such as,

1.

2. 3.

4.

What processes are involved in the clinical su- pervision of art therapists? What factors help or hinder these? What is the function of imagery in the clinical supervision of art therapists? To what extent might the knowledge gained through researching the clinical supervision of art therapists be applied to improve training methods and clinical practice?

Although the term supervision is widely used, it is one that, not unlike the term art therapy, is also open to widely differing interpretations. Many different models of supervision exist, and these differences will inevitably inform and influence our understanding of the term. For example,

1.

2.

3.

4.

Supervision may be psychodynamic or didactic in nature with greater emphasis being placed on the therapists’ or students’ feelings rather than on an exploration of their technique or inter- vention strategies. It may be provided on a group or individual basis. It may or may not involve the use of notes, video or audio tapes. In family work, it may take place during the therapy session itself in conjunction with the use of a one-way screen. It may be regular or infrequent. It may or may not involve making or discussing images. It may or may not be paid for by the students or therapists themselves. It may or may not involve a formal assessment or evaluation of the students’ or therapists’ abil- ity to conduct therapeutic work.

In many situations the term supervision refers to the process whereby one person directs or oversees another’s work from a position of authority. That is, its function is primarily managerial. This is not, it must be stressed, how I am using the term. I do, however, accept that in the context of art therapy training an important aspect of the work of both place- ment supervisors and course tutors is that it does in- volve an assessment and evaluation of each student’s ability to engage therapeutically with clients and their images, a process that may give rise to conflicts and difficulties of one kind or another, and that may in- hibit a student’s ability to engage in and learn about therapeutic relationships (Davis, 1989).

The Process of Supervision

As applied to therapeutic work, including the train- ing of art therapists, the word supervision is generally used to describe the process by which therapists re- ceive support and guidance in order to ensure that

3At the 1992 BAAT AGM the association voted to implement guidelines on the giving and receiving of supervision. The definition of

supervision offered at the AGM is as follows: Supervision is a process in which art therapists may discover ways of improving their working practice through detailed examination, with

their supervisor, of case-work

Working practice is seen to include both work with clients and relationships with fellow professionals. The supervisor’s stance is seen as

respectful, nonjudgemental, but exploratory, self-evaluation and increased awareness may develop. (BAAT, 1992b)

4For reviews of the available literature on supervision see DeBell (1963); Ekstein & Wallerstein (1972); Hawkins & Shohet (1989); and Hess

(1980).

SUPERVISION IN ART THERAPY TRAINING

they are addressing the needs of the client. This en- compasses a number of functions concerned with monitoring, developing and supporting individuals in their therapeutic role. To this end, supervision is gen- erally concerned with,

1. Reducing the anxiety of the student or trainee therapist,

2. Improving the service to the client, 3. Playing with new ideas and fresh approaches, 4. Examining prejudices, 5. Helping the students or therapists develop their

professional identity through being able to in- creasingly think independently and self- critically about their work.

The Supervision of Art Therapy Students

What does all this involve in practice? And, more specifically, what does all this involve for art therapy students during their training? It first of all involves establishing some boundaries and ground rules, or, as it is sometimes referred to, the supervision contract. The first ground rules to establish concern issues such as the purpose of the group, confidentiality, the frequency with which the group will meet, where these meetings will take place, who will be in the group, and so on. Students generally, largely for pragmatic reasons, have less flexibility in this than would qualified art therapists, although it is also true to say that many qualified art therapists would appear to be restricted in choice of supervisor or style of supervision available to them (Ford, 1991).

Having established some ground rules, what do students talk about in supervision? In my experience all sorts of issues are brought to supervision. Initially the focus tends to be upon practical issues such as how one sets about finding suitable clients to work with, how one establishes a safe space in which to work with them and how one begins working with clients and their images. Although supervisors may from time to time find it necessary to offer sugges- tions as to how students might begin to resolve these issues, it is also important to draw upon the individual and collective experience of the group members them- selves. Along with helping students value what they have to offer, this approach has the additional advan- tage of fostering an atmosphere of warmth, safety and trust within the group.

It would, however, be somewhat idealistic to claim that the process of establishing conditions of safety in

supervision groups is without its particular difficul- ties. What is likely to inhibit this process is the fear of appearing foolish, ignorant or worse. Our natural re- sponse to such fears is often to defend ourselves as best we can against them. It is not unusual, therefore, for students to deny, initially at least, that they are experiencing any difficulties in their relationships with clients. Alternatively, some students may at- tempt to hide their feelings of helplessness, of not being good enough, or their confusion in other ways, possibly by only bringing “success stories” to super- vision or, as was noted earlier, by investing enormous effort in attempting to become the all-knowing, all- seeing, ever-effective professional they imagine they could or should be.

That therapists, particularly at the beginning of their training, do not usually ask their supervisors all the questions that occur to them is well recognized. As Friedman and Kaslow, have observed, “Some questions are simply too painful to articulate. Perhaps the most salient of these is: Do I have what it takes to perform this work successfully?” (1986, p. 36).

What is not consciously articulated verbally or through images may be acted-out unconsciously in many of the ways Kadushin (1968) described. These include, among others,

1. Flattering the supervisor (Be Nice to Me Be- cause I Am Nice to You).

2. Attempting to redefine the supervisory relation- ship as a social relationship (Evaluation is Not For Friends).

3. Extreme self-criticism aimed at eliciting sym- pathy and minimizing the opportunity for the supervisee’s work to be critically examined by others, including the supervisor. (Kadushin gives this particular game the title Heading Them Off At The Pass).

The more games of this kind are played or acted- out, the less helpful supervision will be. The role of a supervision group leader involves, therefore, both helping to create the conditions in which it is possible for students to engage in an open and honest explo- ration of their work with clients and assisting the group move toward a better understanding of how its own behavior may inhibit this. Once sufficient safety has been established in the supervision group, stu- dents are able to move on from a largely descriptive reporting of their relationships with clients to one more focused upon the content of particular sessions.

218 DAVID EDWARDS

Very often the focus will shift to feelings arising out of difficulties in establishing or maintaining relation- ships with clients, especially in those situations where clients or patients do not immediately make images or, for example, do not turn up for sessions, and are experienced by the students as rejecting their help.

For many students, the absence of images is par- ticularly alarming and may give rise to quite powerful feelings of inadequacy, as though the mere fact that clients do make images were of itself evidence of how helpful we are being (Mann, 1990). It is at the point at which such difficult feelings begin to surface that the often controversial issue of whether or not super- vision should be therapeutic or educational in orien- tation begins to arise. Whether, in other words, su- pervision should be primarily concerned with learning about feelings through focusing upon the students’ countertransference (Gorkin, 1987), or educational, that is primarily concerned with the teaching and learning of theory and technique.

helping, and is therefore truly itself a helping process. (p. 251)

This view of the supervision process is one with which I am very much in sympathy. Adopting such an approach to supervision does, however, have its po- tential dangers in that some confusion between ther- apy and supervision may occur in the minds of stu- dents, particularly in the early stages of training. Nev- ertheless, it seems that whatever commonalities may exist between the two, functional differences also ex- ist. Supervision, unlike personal therapy, is primarily oriented toward helping therapists help the patients or clients they work with. The difference between the two forms of helping relationship is essentially one of purpose. As the psychotherapist Phil Mollon has com- mented, “In supervision it is the therapy that is the ‘patient’ and the supervisee’s feelings and fantasies are examined only insofar as they may throw light on what is happening in the therapy” (1989, p. 121).

Supervision or Personal Therapy?

‘For an interesting discussion of the issues involved see Balint (1948) and Kovacs (1936)

The origin of this controversy lies in the early his- tory of psychoanalytic training and, in particular, in the different approaches adopted by the Hungarian and Viennese schools. The Hungarian school insisted that the students’ training analyst should also super- vise their analytic work. The Viennese school argued that a clear separation was necessary, with the train- ing analyst addressing the students’ personal issues while the supervisor adopted a didactic role.5

Although not wishing to pre-empt what I have to say about the complex relationship between supervi- sion and personal therapy later in this paper, it is nevertheless necessary to acknowledge at this point that both share many common features. As Ekstein and Wallerstein (1972), for example, noted,

In the context of art therapy training, the term su- pervision, as I understand and am using it, may be thought of as a form of relationship providing emo- tional support for students through helping them feel safe enough to explore, learn about and work through feelings emerging out of their work with patients. As previously argued elsewhere (Edwards, 1989, p. 176), if supervision is to prove helpful it should en- able therapists to increase their awareness of what is going on in therapy. Although the relationship be- tween supervisor and therapist may, therefore, at times concern itself with the provision of guidance through stimulating new ideas or fresh approaches, it will also reflect, through the transference, aspects of the patient/therapist relationship.

This process (the supervisory process) is a help- ing process in which the student is being helped to discover his problems as a psychotherapist, to resolve them with the help of the supervisor, and to develop towards higher integrations as a learner and as a psychotherapist. This process includes affective problems, interpersonal con- flicts, problems in being helped, as well as in

That aspects of the patient/therapist relationship may be reflected or re-enacted in the therapist/ supervisor relationship has long been recognized. Searles (1955) initially referred to this phenomenon as the “reflection process.” Subsequent writers have come to refer to this process as the “Parallel process” (Ekstein & Wallerstein, 1972) or “parallelling” (Wil- mot & Shohet, 1985). Wilmot and Shohet have com- mented, “The concept of parallelling is that the su- pervisee will do to the supervisor what their client has done to them” ( 1985, p. 86). I intend to return to this issue later. For the moment, however, it is necessary

to recognize that learning how to be a therapist is often a frightening experience for the student.

In his paper Mollon (1989) made a number of important points in relation to this. He stated, for example,

One of the dilemmas inherent in learning psy- chotherapy (and, I would add, art therapy) is that one cannot learn it without doing it. There is no avoiding being thrown in at the deep end and beginning from a position of ignorance and naivety. Trainees inevitably suffer injuries to their self-esteem and self-image when finding that they are floundering; the capacity to with- stand these narcissistic blows, perhaps with the aid of supervision, is a crucial factor in whether or not the trainee can learn to practice effective psychotherapy. (p. 113)

Mollon went on to state,

The aim of supervision, . . . should not be to teach a technique directly and didactically, but rather to facilitate the trainee’s capacity to think about the process of therapy-n the assump- tion that technique grows out of this under- standing. But what kind of thinking is involved here? It is not an active problem-solving kind of activity, nor a critical evaluative activity such as is involved in reading a research paper for ex- ample, but rather it is best described as a state of mind which is receptive and reflective, one which is open to impressions, perhaps some- what akin to dreaming. (p. 114)

Or, I would suggest, akin to free-associating, playing or other creative activities such as drawing or paint- ing. It is largely for this reason that I actively encour- age students to make images that draw directly upon their experiences of working with clients and, if they wish, to bring these to the supervision group. Making images as part of the supervision process has a num- ber of benefits, not least among these being that it provides the time and distance necessary for self- reflection and can be immensely helpful in bringing into consciousness issues of which the student may previously have been unaware.

To quote Mollon again,

. . . the supervisor’s task is to help create a space for thinking, a space for reflection with a tolerance for not knowing and not understand- ing-a space for a certain degree of reverie in which peripheral thoughts, feelings and fanta- sies in relation to the patient can be brought into awareness and examined. Ultimately the space must be internalized to form the capacity for internal supervision. (In Casement, 1985, p. 120)

Creating such a “space for thinking, a space in which it is possible for therapists to think about what they are doing as they are doing it, is by no means easy to achieve. It is particularly difficult if, as too often seems to be the case, student art therapists find them- selves working with clients who are hostile or who reject their help, or in an institution that may also be experienced as persecutory through undermining their attempts to help these clients. In view of the fact that the frightening feelings aroused in students are often a consequence of their being in the role of target or container for the angry or hateful feelings of their clients, it is hardly surprising that they may feel persecuted by them. We should not, therefore, un- derestimate the emotional consequences of such experiences.6

I can, perhaps, best illustrate the importance of this by the following example. Some years ago I was su- pervising a male student who was very distressed about an incident that had happened in his work with a female client. After establishing what the student believed to be a good working relationship with his client, quite unexpectedly, from his point of view, she had angrily accused him of all manner of misdemean- ors amounting to professional misconduct. Recount- ing the experience later to me, he did so in such a way as to leave no doubt as to how he felt. He felt bad, and so did I. Interestingly, however, while recounting his experience the student described it as having been something like being hit by an Exocet missile. He felt he had no warning of the attack, his radar had let him down, that is, I had let him down, and the experience had been destructive.

It was only after it had proved possible to allay the student’s distress sufficiently to be able to think cre- atively about what had happened that the full signif- icance, for the student and myself, of the nature of his

SUPERVISION IN ART THERAPY TRAINING 219

6For a thoughtful discussion of the dysfunctional aspects of therapeutic training see Farber (1983).

DAVID EDWARDS

client’s attack began to unfold. The student’s image of being subject to an attack from an Exocet missile was crucial in this. Exocet missiles, we should per- haps remind ourselves, are not only phallic in shape, but are intended to cause internal rather than external damage. What transpired was that unbeknown to him, or indeed anyone else involved at the time, the stu- dent’s client had been sexually abused as a child and was reexperiencing her feelings about this in therapy. In abusing the student, she had let him know, in the only way she could, how she felt, not only about him, but about herself too. Arriving at a better understand- ing of the meaning of his client’s attack enabled the therapy to continue and develop from a point at which it may well have broken down, and encouraged the student to be more trusting of his own impressions and feelings as they arose in his work with clients.

In an article published in ZNSCAPE (October, 1983) its author, Tony Cantle, made the following wise point,

Transference happens for a purpose; the trans- ference lets us know about that part of the client that cannot be borne by himself at the time and which seeks refuge within us until it is safe to incorporate it back in a less persecutory way.

(P. 9)

Patients who have suffered very damaging interac- tions with adults, usually their parents, and usually early on in life, are compelled unconsciously to rec- reate these in the transference. A variety of processes have been described that relate to different aspects of this reenactment of past hurt or injury. One such pro- cess is called “projective identification.” The term projective identification refers to the process by which feelings that are unwanted in the self are uncon- sciously evoked in the other person. In this way dis- owned parts of the self, usually destructive parts, can be located in the other person.

Further on in his article Tony Cantle argued that while powerful transferential feelings may be har- nessed creatively to assist the task of healing and facilitating change there are nevertheless dangers to be faced.

Think of it this way; in the sense that a target faces the archer, then I believe that our profes- sional expertise, our role is that which is usually on display to those with whom we work. It is usually big enough and robust enough to with-

stand most poison arrows no matter how force- fully fired in our direction. However, some of these will inevitably go wide of their target and in my view that means arrows into our own unconscious, our own views, experiences and fears. (pp. 9-10)

These arrows or unconscious communications can, and sometimes do hurt the therapist, not least, as Mollon noted, through inflicting injury to our sense of self-esteem or professional competence.

Commenting on the difficulties to be encountered when working with hostile or angry clients, the psy- chotherapist Colin Woodmansey made the following observation,

Expecting to meet hostility, the patient is on the defensive, or even the offensive, which makes people respond to him in just the hostile way he fears-thus confirming his fears and perpetuat- ing his disorder. It follows that the patient’s need is to find from experience that this does not inevitably happen to do this, the ther- apist . . must avoid becoming anxious, angry, guilty, or even critical, however, disagreeably the patient expresses his problems. (1987, p.

73)

Woodmansey went on to state,

. the breakdown of a therapeutic relation . . . is rarely caused by the therapist’s lack of intellectual understanding. It is usually due to his “human” failure to remain sympathetic and free from apprehension, irritation, or self- reproach in the face of the patient’s insatiable demands for time and attention, . . . his unrea- sonable complaints and accusations, or his re- sistance to being helped. . . Hence the indis- pensable qualification for a psychotherapist is to be more than ordinarily proof against emo- tional provocation . . It is not in dispute that theoretical knowledge can enhance the work of someone who has become able to maintain a therapeutic relationship-but it will be of little use until then. (1987, pp. 73-74)

As few, if indeed any, of the students offered places on the Diploma in Art Therapy course I teach could be said to be entirely free from emotional vul- nerability, acquiring such an “indispensable qualifi-

SUPERVISION IN ART THERAPY TRAINING 221

cation” within the current one-year full-time period of training has long been more of a hope than a real- ity. It is, I believe, for this reason that the profession in the UK has taken the decision to both extend the length of training and, controversially, to make the undertaking of ‘ ‘ . . . some form of personal therapy” mandatory for trainees for “. . the duration of the art therapy training course , . . on a minimum basis of once per week” (BAAT, 1992a).’

Controversially, because rather than further burden the student art therapists at the beginning of their training with the requirement that they find them- selves a therapist and enter into a relationship that is likely to prove time-consuming, emotionally demand- ing, costly and the value of which in relation to their ability to help clients being far from conclusive (Ma- caskill, 1988), why not, as Woodlnansey argued later in his paper, help them shed their own anxiety “ . in the way patients are helped to shed theirs?”

. Woodmansey further stated,

The psychotherapy teacher’s task is to do just that. For, his basic objective is to enable the students to relate therapeutically to their pa- tients, just as that of the students is to help their patients to relate more healthily with other peo- ple; and if one of these tasks entails therapy rather than teaching, so must the other . . . the teacher will have ample op~~unity to provide this-in two kinds of situation. If he tries to teach theory, the students’ resistance is likely to prevent any learning until it has been suitably dispelled; and when students bring case- material for supervision, they will re-experi- ence in relation to the teacher the anxious and resentful feelings arising earlier towards the pa- tient. The teacher must therefore give therapeu- tic help as and when required during the actual teaching. (1987, p. 74)

This is, of course, much easier said than done, al- though Woodmansey’s view, a view heavily influ- enced, I believe, by Michael Balint’s work with GPs (1964), is one with which I concur and believe de-

serves more serious attention than it generally receives.

Concluding Remarks

The training of art therapists should not be ap- proached in a purely academic manner and will, therefore, by its very nature involve students learning about feelings, that is, their own feelings as well as those of their clients. It is often advocated that the place in which the therapist is best able to learn about the nature of his or her personality, habitual responses to others and areas of conflict is in personal therapy. For some students this may well be the case. How- ever, personal therapy and supervision cannot be as easily separated as is often advocated; both involve learning about feelings and, to repeat Balint’s often quoted phrase, both entail a “. . . limited though con- siderable, change in . . . personality” (1964, p. 299). Rather than thinking of the two helping relationships as being in conflict, or with supervision being thought of as more than education but less than psychother- apy, it would be more helpful to think of them as forming, as Pedder suggested, a “continuum” (1986).

Pedder further commented,

. . . if supervision is to be pitched somewhere along a spectrum between education and psy- chotherapy, then how far from either end should it be? Perhaps this depends on the level of development of the trainee. Just as with psy- chotherapy itself, the level of therapy will vary with the developmental level of the patient. A more disturbed patient may need more directive suppo~; a healthier patient needs much less. Similarly, an infant needs firm support; an ad- olescent must begin to go his own way. (1986, p. 2)

As was stated at the beginning of this article, the purpose of an art therapy training is to help the student move toward acquiring the ability to practice inde- pendently in a range of clinical or psychotherapeutic settings. It is my belief that supervision has a vital

71t is interesting to note that the proposal to make some form of personal therapy mandatory for students during their art therapy training was

not made by BAAT’s Training and education Committee or the Association’s Council, but came from the floor at the Association’s AGM in 1992. In the original document drafted by the Training and Education Committee after many years of thoughtful discussion, personal

therapy was “strongly recommended” (BAAT, 1992a), but not mandatory.

222 DAVID EDWARDS

role to play in making this possible and in helping the student begin to develop a professional identity.

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