The Supervisory Encounter: A Guide for Teachers of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis

Good supervision is crucial to the training of any therapist. Yet most who are asked to supervise receive little instruction in how best to proceed. What is missing is a theory and technique of supervision that can help them be effective teachers, no matter from what mental health discipline they come.The authors of this book, who have supervised in a variety of educational settings and have taught students from a wide range of mental health disciplines, now provide a theoretical and technical framework for understanding and deepening the supervisory process. They clearly describe phases of supervision (from the opening session to termination), its goals, and the nature and purpose of a number of supervisory interventions. They delineate modes of thinking that are essential to being a good therapist and discuss how best to foster them. They demonstrate how supervision can be intimate, personal, and honest without becoming a form of therapy. Through clinical vignettes, they show how to diagnose impediments to learning and describe strategies for overcoming them. While providing an interesting history of supervision and a portrait of Freud as supervisor, they focus mainly on how newer theories such as self psychology, intersubjectivity, and an interactive two-person psychology influence the practice of supervision.

This thoughtful book provides a theoretical and technical framework for supervising and training psychodynamically oriented therapists and psychoanalysts. Written by three clinicians with extensive supervisory experience, the book describes the phases of supervision, its goals, and the nature of supervisory interventions.

This thoughtful, engaging book provides a theoretical and technical framework for supervising and training psychodynamically oriented therapists and psychoanalysts. Written by three clinicians with extensive supervisory experience, the book describes the phases of supervision, its goals, and the nature of supervisory interventions.

"A highly readable, very sophisticated, and practical volume on supervision that I recommend strongly to supervisors and supervises alike". — Stanley B. Messer, Contemporary Psychology

"Psychoanalytic educators have been searching in vain for a comprehensive book that would be useful to address the practical problem of how to do supervision. This is such a book — an achievement of the first order". — David Sachs, M.D.

"The depth of scholarship and the authors' attention to the detail of the supervisory encounter make this book an invaluable addition for both supervisors and students". — Anne Alonso, Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research