Creative approaches

Much supervision is dominated by the medium of talking. Descriptive re-telling of a clinical episode is unlikely to be sufficient for effective supervision. This chapter explores alternative approaches to material brought to supervision including verbal methods that involve interrupting ‘normal’ conversational patterns and non-verbal approaches that may better suit visual learners. Specific topics include metaphor and imagery, writing and drawing, the use of objects in visual supervision, sociograms, sculpting, therapeutic cards and action methods. Such methods require the commitment of the parties and careful management of the process because they can cut through surface presentation to something ‘raw.’