The Influence of the Supervision of Psychotherapy upon being Therapeutic: I: Introduction and Background to the Supervisory Relationship

Abstract

In individual psychotherapy which derives from psychoanalysis, the most important teaching tool is individual supervision. This is in keeping with the fact that close person-to-person contact between student and teacher is the most effective mode of teaching in a university. The supervisor's first task is to transmit a body of knowledge, about psychotherapy, to the student. His second task is to give the student the benefit of his experience around clinical problems or questions. His third task is to assist the student in the development of certain attitudes which are valuable and even essential for a psychotherapist. This latter task is accomplished largely via “reality identification”.