Triadic Supervision
There are many ways a counselor in training can be supervised and educated. Individual-based supervision and group-based supervision are widely known and researched while triadic supervision is another approved modality with less research.
According to the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP), triadic supervision is a tutorial and mentoring relationship with one supervisor and two supervisees.
Clinical supervision includes a ‘senior member’ helping, assessing, enhancing, and evaluating the ‘junior member’ under them. In a triadic relationship one senior member would be evaluating two supervisees at a time.
Triadic supervision has proven to be ‘effective in enhancing supervisees' understanding of clients and increasing their level of awareness in themselves and others. Those under triadic supervision have been found to use feedback better and learn vicariously.
Having the different perspectives and situations a counselor in training might have can help educate both supervisees while also giving them peer-to-peer support. Supervisors have more time to implement learning tools and techniques during supervision like ‘tracking specific counseling skills, tracking nonverbal responses, using role-play activities.’
One disadvantage of this type of supervision is the limited open discussion supervisees might feel they have. Some boundaries the supervisor and supervisees might face is dealing with critical feedback and making sure it benefits and is appropriate for both individuals and privacy of feedback.
El Duende
One important aspect of supervision is self-discloser and personal engagement and art-making promotes this discloser as well as emotional and cognitive expression and maintains a verbal/nonverbal way to express clinical issues.
The painting process of an El Duende is based on the reflection of clinical work. It requires consistent work of the training process depicting growth and vulnerability. The supervisees work on one canvas, layering the paint, and reworking.
Each week supervisees spend time working on canvas and photograph each transformation to document the evolution of the art. Group explorations focused on reflection of experience and feedback.
The work on an El Duende through supervision has shown an improvement in awareness and disclosure of self and to others. Peer feedback helped encourage disclosure and practice verbal language to the artwork.
Some limitations might be the framework in while the El Duende is implemented. In this study, they used a feminist framework.
Art Therapy Professional Approach
Art therapy has struggled in the past and sometimes still does to be known and established as a recognized profession.
Art therapy could be thought of as an interdisciplinary field where many approaches are used to come together as one. This may leave therapists in a ‘metaphorical limbo’ of where they actually belong.
If we remove the interdisciplinary view with a transdisciplinary view, we could gain a better picture of the professional art therapy field.
A transdisciplinary approach provides a different foundation for art therapy and brings together the different concepts but ‘transcends the boundaries’ by building and going beyond art therapies fundamental values.
Rather than borrowing from other fields art therapy is thought of as a new practice with its own complex unique ideas.
This approach can strengthen the art therapy field and to look past theoretical differences while focusing on innovation, collaboration, flexibility, holistic, autonomous, and unified themes.
Bucciarelli, A. (2016). Art Therapy: A Transdisciplinary Approach. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 33(3), 151–155. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.uc.opal-libraries.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1110220&site=ehost-live
Lawson, G., Heirt, S. F., & Getz, H. (2009). A Model for Using Triadic Supervision in Counselor Preparation Programs. Counselor Education & Supervision, 48(4), 257–270. doi:10.1002/j.1556-6978.2009.tb00079.x
Robb, M., & Miller, A. (2017). Supervisee Art-Based Disclosure in “El Duende” Process Painting. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 34(4), 192–200. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.uc.opal-libraries.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1169557&site=ehost-live
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