Bore Psychologist. Supervision. Identity Of The Psychotherapist

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Supervision is one of the key methods and the most important component in the training of practical psychologists and psychotherapists. Approaches to supervision differ depending on the psychotherapy school. For example, the psychoanalytic paradigm of supervision is focused on the therapist himself, while the behavioral one involves the training of key skills.

Attention is drawn to the requirement of professional associations for their members to have in their experience a certain number of hours of supervision, both during the course of training programs and in their further practice.

Primary supervision

In my opinion, this is the most important method that contributes to the formation of a specialist. Here a healthy identity of the psychotherapist is developed and honed, the acquisition of which is extremely important. Professional identity, being a part of the self-concept, becomes a coordinate system in which both professional and personal experience of a specialist are interpreted.

The processes taking place with a psychologist during his training in the skill of the profession can be divided into several main stages, each of which, step by step, pushes the specialist towards individualization, the formation of a professional identity and style. Each stage has its own anxieties, difficulties in building relationships with clients, and its own dynamics of relations with a supervisor. Overcoming difficulties is the process of professional growth, and the supervisor, with his competent participation, ensures this process of “professional maturation”.

Winnicott spoke of a "supportive environment" in the person of "a good enough mother." The development of children's identity is closely correlated with the ability of adults to adapt to the changing needs, abilities and capabilities of children. This view perfectly describes the model of the primary complex of supervision and the developmental process of the learning psychotherapist, where the supervisor adapts to the changing needs and abilities of the supervisee. Therefore, at different stages of the supervised's professional development, the supervisor will have different tasks.

Thinking about the stages, and even googling in search of ready-made solutions (why should I reinvent the wheel myself?), I reduced everything to 6 main stages of becoming a psychotherapist:

1. Anticipation

A clean, uncluttered neophyte, with a lot of ideas about the profession, and often romanticizing it. This stage begins as a student and ends at the first meeting with the first patient. If you give any characteristic, then here the specialist has a pronounced diffuse anxiety and excitement. On the one hand, there is an exciting novelty, on the other, an uncomfortable feeling associated with the absence of a specific professional goal. At this stage, the role of a supervisor is very similar to that of a parent of a newborn, where it is important to provide sufficient safety and a deep empathic response.

2. Identification

This stage of development begins with the first work with a client. This stage usually proceeds “painlessly” and ends when the specialist realizes his impact on the client.

3. Addiction

This stage is characterized by the movement of a specialist from passivity to partial dependence on the supervisor and further activity. The responsibility for the process of psychotherapy increases many times over. Realization comes that the specialist can influence the patient. At this stage, the neophyte begins to fluctuate from overestimating his capabilities to incorrectly underestimating them. The feeling of omnipotence is replaced by guilt for what he supposedly could have done and did not do. A particularly strong feeling of guilt in a novice psychotherapist may arise if during the course of therapy it becomes necessary to hospitalize the patient.

This stage is the most dangerous. Not a small number of specialists get stuck on it, developing their dependence on supervision, finding comfort in it, which reduces professional anxiety.

4. Acceptance of independence

This stage occurs when the neophyte ceases to be such and begins to feel like a professional, independent, full-fledged, with its own boundaries, pool and the ability to independently conduct psychotherapeutic processes without “observers”.

5. Identity and independence

(My favorite stage.) At this stage, the problem of giving up the infantile dependence on the supervisor is solved. This process is somewhat reminiscent of separation from parents, when the teenager follows the path of more and more autonomy from parental authority figures. The psychotherapist discovers a new superpower - to survive without the support of a supervisor. Now (previously avoided due to the need for addiction), major disagreements with authority figures are becoming more acute. Power struggles at this stage are the norm.

6. Collegiality

The final part of becoming a professional. Often it is marked by its own search for supervisory work, wards, building new relationships.

This is where the long process of supervision comes to a logical end. The prevention process begins.

Preventive supervision

Since the text turns out to be quite long, I will not describe this point in detail. I will write this - grateful acceptance of supervision with a ready request. Preventive supervision is a mandatory component of psychotherapeutic practice for a psychotherapist. Meetings with your supervisor continue at regular intervals.

Often, professionals who neglect supervision suffer from an uncontrollable urge to diagnose outside the workflow, making diagnoses without asking, making a request unnecessarily and asking for help. Unfortunately, there is a lack of supervision among the general mass of specialists.

I would like to talk more about the topic “I went to the cinema with my supervisors yesterday. It was a bomb movie "or" Yesterday we had a great walk with my supervisor, we are friends. " Violation of the setting, boundaries and ethics by the supervisor and the need to terminate the pseudo-supervisory contact. But this is another time.

To write this article, I partially used the materials: Florence Kaslow "Supervision and training. Models, dilemmas, and challenges". New York-Haworth"