Biography as Hypothesis - Art Therapy Work with Relationship Experiences in Body, Image, and Posture

These approaches are suitable for art-therapeutic work in psychosomatics, psychiatry, rehabilitation, and private practice, as well as for counseling and educational contexts. They combine artistic practice with psychodynamic and body-oriented understanding and foster an attitude that enables processes of transformation through creative work. They are especially valuable for professionals who support developmental, relational, and self-reflective processes.

All modules combine art-therapeutic practice with current findings from attachment, embodiment, affect, and resilience research, modern psychodynamics, and neurophysiology, particularly with regard to predictive processes and memory reconsolidation.
An accompanying script for the complete continuing education program provides clear points of reference for observing and documenting anamnestic and process-related aspects in each module.
This structured connection of self-experience, neurophysiological understanding, and professional evaluation supports participants in preparing their individual case documentation on a sound basis – as a prerequisite for the final certificate and at the same time as a reflection of their own learning and development path

This continuing education program is not art therapy training and does not replace an academic degree program (BA / MA).

Objectives and content

In the five online modules, theoretical foundations, artistic exercises, and art-therapeutic interventions are interwoven.
The focus is on:

• the exploration of biographical choreographies in the image-making process,
• the perception of transgenerational dynamics,
• working with formation, dissolution, and reordering as expressions of inner development,
• and the experience of the shift between inner image, action, and resonance.

Artistic practice, short lectures, partner exercises, and joint reflection enable in-depth, experience-based learning.

Participants learn to,

• read biographical patterns and relationship choreographies in the image-making process,
• apply methods of biographical inquiry that open up rather than interpret,
• guide clients back to their own trail,
• work with transgenerational themes sensitively and methodologically securely,
• and understand the unspoken, unformed as a space for transformation.

Target group

Artistic therapists and art therapists with a completed degree or corresponding qualifications from related professional fields.
Individual modules can also be booked separately.

For students of Alanus University, we would like to make participation in continuing education programs possible with a 50% discount. An individual quota is available for each continuing education program. University certificates are excluded from discounts.

At the beginning is the question of how we became who we are today. Our early relationship experiences – being seen, being held, being unsettled – shape our bodily resonance and our trust in contact. In artistic practice, these traces can be touched without analyzing them. Color, rhythm, and material become witnesses to the early security or lack that shaped us.

• Introduction to the concept of body and relationship memory
  • Painting and movement processes for tracing one’s own “inner being-shaped”
  • Working with spaces of resonance: how material responds and guides
  • Reflection on therapeutic presence in early relationship themes

Application in practice:
Participants develop a deeper understanding of nonverbal transferences and early childhood resonance patterns in art therapy. They learn to stabilize clients through material, pace, and posture when early experiences are touched in the image.

This unit focuses on the power of resistance – as a movement of becoming oneself. We examine how boundary-setting, defiance, or shame appear in the artistic process and what message they hold. When the counter-image is understood, inner conflict can become a source of energy and self-assertion.

• Creative work with contrasts, overlays, and ruptures
  • Exploring one’s own “no” as an impulse toward self-definition
  • Use of material changes and rhythm shifts for regulation
  • Reflection on therapeutic presence in phases of resistance

Application in practice:
Participants learn to understand resistance not as a blockage but as an expression of maturation. They gain methods for safely accompanying clients through visual confrontations and promoting the transition from reactance to creative freedom.

Some themes return again and again in life as in images. In this session, we explore how repetitions arise and what they want to teach us. Through serial image sequences and small variations, awareness emerges for the moment in which we can make a new decision.

• Working with image series, repetition, and traces of change
  • Recognizing and naming biographical patterns in material and movement
  • Exercises for pausing between impulse and reaction
  • Exchange on transference and countertransference in practice

Application in practice:
Participants develop the ability to recognize dynamics of repetition and accompany them with refined perception. In therapeutic practice, this makes possible a balance between mirroring, resonance, and conscious interruption.

Crises are transitions in which the old dissolves and the new is not yet visible. In the artistic process, this suspended state becomes tangible: destruction and creation lie close together. The studio space becomes a laboratory in which fragments and emptiness become teachers.

• Working with destruction, reconstruction, and transformation of material
  • Using darkness, silence, and pauses as therapeutic qualities
  • Exercises on inner stability and breath guidance in crisis processes
  • Group exchange on boundaries and possibilities in crisis support

Application in practice:
Participants experience how they can offer support and orientation in moments of crisis without rushing to “fix” things. Awareness of rhythm, containment, and resonance deepens the ability to guide clients safely through transitional phases.

The final module is devoted to maturation and integration. It addresses the question of what inner posture supports our work – and what we want to pass on. The final image becomes a harvest: what has grown becomes visible, and what may continue to have an effect in the world.

• Creation of a personal harvest or legacy image
  • Reflection on one’s own professional posture and role
  • Exchange on ethical dimensions in art-therapeutic work
  • Preparation of the case documentation and final reflection

Application in practice:
Participants link their personal experience with their professional practice. From self-experience emerges a clear posture that combines artistic, psychodynamic, and ethical competence.

(At the end of the individual sessions, this applies to all 5 modules)

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To obtain the certificate, a case presentation in the form of a process example (approx. 1–2 pages of text and 2–3 pages of photo documentation) must be submitted.
Alternatively, a portfolio, method development, or learning journal is possible.

Prof. Hildrun Rolff

Artist, art therapist, teaching art therapist, art-therapeutic supervisor, and art coach at the intersection of art, education, and business.
She is founder of the independent earth-s institut (education–art therapytools–science).

Her many years of experience in teaching as well as in the development and continuation of art-therapeutic degree program curricula shape her work, as does her focus on the biographical and transgenerational dimension of artistic processes. At the center of her approach is the connection between art, psychodynamics, and bodily perception as the foundation of a creative self-understanding.

Head of the Institute for Continuing Education in Artistic Therapies:
Brigitta Jaroschek M.A. (research associate)

Further information, contact options, and our FAQ can be found here:

edu.Art – Institute for Continuing Education in the Artistic Therapies | Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences