Supervision

Abstract

In contemporary psychiatric practice and training, “supervision ” consists of regular meetings between a supervisor —typically a psychiatrist with experience in the subject—and a supervisee , often a trainee. The meetings between supervisor and supervisee typically involve matters regarding patient care. To this, they may choose to review relevant scientific literature, discuss pharmacological approaches, or use clinical material to formulate diagnostic interventions about a psychotherapy process. In regard to the psychotherapy process, the supervisor attends to what has transpired between the supervisee and his or her patient, with the goal of providing guidance for how best to proceed in terms of moving along the patient’s psychotherapeutic treatment. However, the process of psychotherapy supervision has evolved considerably over the last 50 years due to the introduction of the concepts from two-person relational psychology and based on the findings from neurobiology and developmental psychology as discussed in Chapter 3. Thus far, these concepts have been studied and disseminated mainly by psychologists and social workers; it is our hope that with this book, we can bring the concepts of relational two-person psychology, including psychotherapy supervision, to the attention of young child and adolescent psychiatrists and psychotherapists.

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

—Carl Jung