Creative art diaries as a tool to support the development of professional competencies in therapeutic work with clients

Abstract

Methods to promote professionals’ self-knowledge and affinity for therapeutic alliances may be valuable to facilitate clients’ journeys towards recovery. This article illuminates how the use of creative art diaries can support the development of generic professional competencies in therapeutic work with clients. The methods entailed the construction of a telling case. This case was based on an autoethnographic approach to a creative art project created within the context of an expressive arts based program. The case was analysed with inspiration from Peirce’s semiotic and van Gennep’s theory of rites of passages. The findings showed how work with a creative art diary could be understood in terms of representamens and objects. The diary was interpreted as useful in different ways to facilitate transitions between phases of separation, liminality, and incorporation regarding the development of generic professional competencies and self-awareness in therapeutic work with clients. Conclusively, creative art diaries could be useful to develop self-awareness, self-knowledge, self-reflection, and self-reflexivity in the development of generic professional competencies regarding therapeutic work with clients, which per se could facilitate therapeutic alliances and recovery oriented practices. However, they must be supported in the process by possible interpretations, and by ways to support the professionals’ competencies regarding sociological understandings of client meetings.