Integrating creative and expressive therapies within clinical supervision to foster supervisee personal and professional development: A review of the literature

Over the past ten years there has been a growing interest in the use and effectiveness of creative and expressive therapies within counselling (Bulchalter, 2009; Moreno, 2014; Purswell & Stulmaker, 2015). According to Degges- White and Davis, (2017) the expressive arts have the power to transcend and connect to parts of the self that traditional talk approaches may not be capable of. Through the use of mediums such as art, music, dance/movement, drama, poetry, creative writing, play and sandtray, and by focusing on the process of self-expression rather than the aesthetic merits of the art itself (Malchiodi, 2012), therapists can assist clients to draw on inner feelings and the unconscious to facilitate a more comprehensive form of self-expression and deeper levels of insight (Degges-White & Davis, 2017). Less well understood, however, are the ways in which creative and expressive therapies may contribute to a counselling supervisee’s personal and professional development. Bernard and Luke’s (2015) ten-year analysis of the literature on clinical supervision, for example, revealed that the use of expressive therapies within supervision is an ‘emerging’ practice warranting further attention and research. In light of this, a narrative review of the literature was undertaken to illuminate not only the contributions that integrating creative and expressive therapies within supervision might make to a supervisee’s personal and professional development but also to highlight the gaps in the current knowledge base with regard to this ‘emerging’ practice. By way of orientation, definitions of key terms relating to narrative literature reviews, creative and expressive therapies, clinical supervision, and the personal and professional learning needs of the supervisee are provided, followed by an outline of key search terms, and data retrieval methods. The key themes identified within the literature are then examined with reference to the research question, “In what ways does the integration of creative and expressive therapies in clinical supervision foster a counselling supervisee’s personal and professional learning needs?” Discussion of the findings, together with gaps in the current knowledge base and recommendations for future research are then presented.