ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how client and therapist experience an art therapy process by using a multi-method narrative case study. The research material consists of the therapist's notes, recorded and transcribed patient interviews and artworks. In the theoretical reflection on case narratives three layers of art oriented dialogical experiences are identified in addition to those interpersonal and intrapersonal dialogues inherent in verbal psychotherapy. These embodied, material and sensory dialogues are unique to art therapy experiences. The characters who explore their experiences are a young woman, 'Kuura', who has a history of multiple diagnoses including major depression with psychotic symptoms and borderline features and the author, a middle-aged art therapist and cognitive-analytic psychotherapist. Kerr, Brickett and Chanen describe cognitive-analytic therapy as an integrative interactive therapy which is based on a radically social notion of self and in which the main emphasis is on extending explicit self-reflective observing.
