Supervision of Dramatherapy

Phil Jones, Ditty Dokter, Phil Jones, Ditty Dokter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134063598
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Teatro

Supervision of Dramatherapy offers a thorough overview of dramatherapy supervision and the issues that can arise during the supervisory task.

Phil Jones and Ditty Dokter bring together experts from the field to examine supervision in a range of contexts with different client groups, including dramatherapy with children, forensic work, and intercultural practice. Each chapter features:

• theoretical grounding
• the importance of action methods
• position in the professional lifecycle
• application in relation to setting and client groups.

Using illustrative examples, Supervision of Dramatherapy provides practical guidance and theoretical grounding, appealing to supervisors and supervisees alike, as well as psychotherapists interested in the use of dramatic methods in the supervisory setting.

Chapter 1
The state of the art of supervision

Review and research

Phil Jones

Introduction

Supervision is connected with all aspects of dramatherapeutic work. Grant (1999) has described the core of supervision to be the act of a therapist presenting their work to a supervisor. It is an ongoing process, normally conducted throughout the practising life of a therapist, and concerns and consists of a complex set of relationships. Grant sees supervision as ‘an opportunity for clients to get the best help possible’, as well as aiding the professional development of the therapist (Grant 1999: 7). In her comments we already see client, therapist, supervisor and profession brought into relationship with each other through the act of supervision. Supervision has become closely allied to professionalisation, and in the UK is a necessary component of state registration. As Chesner, for example, has pointed out in relation to dramatherapists in the UK:

The profession in Britain has reached a point…where there is not only a list of practitioners and trainees but a register of dramatherapy supervisors. These have been trained in a BADth accredited course and themselves make a commitment to be supervised on their supervision as a further level of professional quality assurance.

(Chesner 1999: 41)

The following gives a sample of some of the key relationships connected to supervision in dramatherapy:

• between therapist and client
• between supervisor and therapist
• between the settings that offer therapy and their staff and users
• between training institutions and trainee therapists
• between regulators of the standards and practice of therapy and those delivering and consuming therapy.

Looked at in this way, supervision forms a framework to enable a specific kind of contact between all of those involved in therapy. This chapter will introduce this contact. It draws on literature and research undertaken by myself and Dokter (see Chapter 2) to look at the different ideas about what supervision is, exploring what different schools of thought consider to be the nature of the supervisory process.

For other discussions of professionalisation

The chapter examines the different contexts of contemporary dramatherapy supervision: the different situations within which it is practised. This includes a consideration of the role of supervision in the life of a professional and the different ways in which therapists encounter supervision in different settings. It looks at the definition of supervision — what it is seen to be, and what it is not. It includes an overview of the aims and outcomes of supervision. Dramatherapy is practised within a number of different frameworks or models (Jennings et al. 1994; Read Johnson 1999; Andersen-Warren and Grainger 2000; Landy 2001; Jones 2005; Langley 2006). This chapter refers to research undertaken by myself and Dokter into how dramatherapists see these models in relation to the nature and function of the supervision they receive. Most importantly, the chapter outlines some of the thinking, evidence and debates about whether, and how, supervision benefits the client coming to therapy.

For other discussions of models in dramatherapy

The different contexts of supervision

The introduction to this chapter stressed the nature of supervision as relating to contact. The literature on supervision from different professions describes supervision in a variety of ways but the theme of contact is a constant. The Register of Psychologists Specialising as Psychotherapists: Principles and Procedures talks of ongoing supervision and professional development as a requirement of practice and justifies this by attributing to supervision particular value in terms of the kind of contact it enables: ‘to the development of honest and satisfactory ways of establishing and maintaining constructive therapeutic alliances with clients and relationships with colleagues’ (Psychotherapy Implementation Group 2005: Principle 4). McNaughton et al. (2006) cite the UK Department of Health definition of contact in clinical supervision as a ‘formal process of professional support and learning which enables individual practitioners to develop knowledge and competence, assume responsibility for their own practice and enhance consumer protection and safety of care in complex clinical situations’ (UK Department of Health 1993, cited in McNaughton et al. 2006:211). McNaughton et al. stress contact in a different way from their citation of the Department of Health. They contrast the task of line management supervisory accountability with clinical supervision, and see ‘the aim of supervision is to develop a trusting and collaborative relationship, enabling counsellors to feel safe and supported enough to reflect on all dimensions of their practice’ (2006:211).

Whilst contact can be said to be the essence of supervision, the nature of this contact clearly varies. So, for example, supervision can create contact between supervisor and therapist to enable the therapist to reflect on their practice. It can create contact between a professional body, overseeing standards of therapeutic practice in order to protect clients, and a clinic or private practice offering therapy. In this way, supervision can be part of the processes that enable a client to be assured that the therapist they are working with is receiving support adequate to maintaining a quality of delivery. Supervision can be used as part of line management where one worker offers supervision to another as part of ‘administration of the line functions of an organization; administration of activities contributing directly to the organization’s output’ (www.thefreedictionary.com/line+management). Already, through these brief examples, we can see that supervision creates meaningful and varied contacts, and that these can have different functions. This brief overview has used terms such as ‘reflect’, ‘overseeing standards’, ‘receiving support’ and ‘protection’. Such variety reflects the richness and importance of supervision. However, this diversity and range can also create tensions and dilemmas.

The different kinds of connections, contact and function of supervision can work easily and well together, but they can also produce friction for those involved. The tensions can represent dilemmas such as whether a supervisory relationship can contain both monitoring of standards and support for a therapist, for example. Jacobs and Jacobs (1996) talk about the importance of separating line management from clinical supervision, saying that supervision for therapists, ‘is not, as in some professions, the equivalent of line management…strenuous efforts (are made) to separate line management and supervision…carried out by different people…to talk about patient or client work without any anxiety that she or he will be reprimanded for not working well enough’ (Jacobs and Jacobs 1996:1). Another tension concerns the nature of supervision over the lifetime of a therapist’s work. Some have questioned the necessity of supervision beyond the training stage. Behr summarises this view in the following way: ‘it is an open question whether supervision should be construed as an essential element of the work routine, or a luxury for which a few can afford either the time or the money and which belongs indispensably to the student role’ (1995:17). Others have asserted the essential need of continuing supervision throughout the life of the professional (Jacobs and Jacobs 1996; Blackwell 2005).

The literature and our research (Jones and Dokter 2008) indicate that the use of, and need for, supervision can vary during the life of a therapist. So, for example, it can initially be part of the training process and of the support and assessment within areas such as a training placement. Later, it can take the function of support within continuing professional and personal development for the therapist. For some this journey will evolve into their training to become a supervisor. Aspects of this changing role within the life of a dramatherapist will be featured through the book, illustrating the need for flexibility in relation to the developing practitioner.

For other discussions of training and supervision

The role of supervision also relates to professional identity. Behr has talked about this in a particular way, in relation to the transmission of knowledge, ways of working and approach: ‘Supervision…becomes a way of transmitting an accumulated body of knowledge and expertise from one generation of therapists to the next. It is a vehicle for the “oral tradition” of the school of psychotherapy it represents’ (1995:4). In the research, 96.1 per cent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that supervision is ‘useful to keep me connected with my discipline and profession’. The points made above relate to this, but concern this process over time — the change from neophyte to fledgling to maturing therapist. Supervision relates to professional identity in other ways. It has played, and plays, a role in the broad establishment of the profession through the development and maintenance of standards in setting benchmarks for training and for national criteria, and in creating a space for the professional associations to articulate what is necessary to therapists in their ongoing work. It can be part of the way therapists maintain a sense of their professional identity and fuel their creative and personal development within their work. The complex relationship between professional body and therapist, between the supervision space and the holding and development of professional identity, will be a feature of much of the discussion of dramatherapy supervision in this book.

Just as dramatherapy has expanded to work with an enormous range of clients in different settings: from school to prison, from private practice to national and regional health systems, so supervision is connected to very different working contexts. The research undertaken in relation to this book gave a picture of the following diversity (terminology is that used by respondents): mental health day care, forensic settings, mainstream and specialist education, settings for elderly people, family and adoption services, adults with learning disabilities in day and residential centres, medium secure hospitals, settings for people living with brain injury, centres for people with eating disorders, work with people dealing with addictions and freelance private practice with referral and self-referral from the National Health Service, education and the general community.

The clients and settings ask of therapist and supervisor alike to engage with great differences in knowledge and experience. This range concerns areas as different as the diagnosis of schizophrenia, the understanding of child protection legislation, the impact of poverty on well being or the relationship between the justice and health systems. This book looks at issues arising from such diversity and examines some of the ways in which practitioners of therapy and supervision work with it.

In a similar way, dramatherapy embraces a wide range of theoretical approaches and models. There is not one way of practising dramatherapy, nor is there one theoretical approach. So, supervision has needed to develop a capacity to encounter and work with these differences. These include dramatherapy practised from a Jungian perspective, influenced by cognitive behavioural therapy or rooted in arts approaches allied to conflict resolution work. This book explores the ways in which supervision models and approaches have attempted to respond to such diversity.

Supervision in dramatherapy is emergent — it is developing new ideas and approaches (Tselikas-Portmann 1999; Lahad 2000). It both engages with new and existing ideas about supervision and reflective practice from other fields such as clinical psychology or participatory arts and is engaged in creative ideas from the theory and practice of dramatherapy itself. This book participates in the emergence and debate about theory and method of supervision in dramatherapy, both in the individual chapters and in the research into supervision which the editors conducted with the support of the British Association of Dramatherapists.

What is supervision? What is it not?

Supervision in dramatherapy is not a static field, with ideas, methods and forms that are petrified in stone. The field as a whole is rooted in creativity, exploration and imagination. This book looks at the ways in which supervision is being created. Some have argued that creativity emerges from a number of interacting factors such as imagination, tension and the combination of different factors into new wholes (Muller-Thalheim 1975; Jones 2005). This approach can be useful in examining dramatherapy supervision - to see it as a developing field of thought and practice combining such factors as imagination and tension, the production of new wholes.

In essence, supervision can be seen as one worker meeting with another to enable them to reflect on their practice. As referred to above, though, the theoretical grounding and practice of supervision varies. This ranges from psychoanalytically orientated supervision (Sharpe 1995) to cognitively based approaches, from transcultural models (Behr 1995) to those rooted in peer work (Blackwell 2005). The values of group or individual supervision have been discussed and compared (Sproul-Bolton et al. 1995) and of work rooted in accurate note taking (Langs 1994) compared to those emphasising the role of creativity and fantasy (Maclagan 1997).

For other discussions of approaches to supervision

Supervision can be defined in a number of ways. The act of defining it reflects issues such as ideas about client needs and rights; the...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Preface to the series and this book
• Introduction
• 1 The state of the art of supervision: review and research
• 2 Researching contemporary supervision: method and findings
• 3 From role to play: research into action techniques in supervision
• 4 Training supervision in dramatherapy
• 5 A theatre model of dramatherapy supervision
• 6 Transference and countertransference in relation to the dramatic form in supervision training
• 7 Intercultural supervision: the issue of choice
• 8 Using psychodrama and dramatherapy methods in supervising dramatherapy practicum students
• 9 Applying generic clinical supervision training to arts therapy supervision
• 10 An exploration of supervision in education
• 11 Making space for thought: supervision in a learning disability context
• 12 A place of containment: supervising dramatherapists in a secure setting
• Key terms