Teaching Creativity in Family Therapy Supervision: Looking Through an Improvisational Lens

Abstract

Improvisation, the key to creativity, is prized by theorists and practitioners of family therapy. Yet the family therapy supervision literature offers little about how therapists learn to become creative in their work with clients. To explore improvisation in family therapy supervision, this research project turned first to the world of improvisational jazz to formulate a way of seeing. A search of the literature on improvisation and interviews with jazz improvisation teachers helped create a lens through which to look at how a supervisor creates a context that fosters learning to improvise. Using discourse analysis, the author then examined supervisor and student conversations that had been audiotaped during a semester-long family therapy practicum. The six categories to emerge from the analysis are presented: (1) orienting toward improvisation, (2) staying in conversation, (3) being noncentral, (4) avoiding pigeonholes, (5) tolerating uncertainty, and (6) finding freedom within limits. Conclusions are drawn from the analysis of the data, and implications for training family therapists are offered.