IJSP Number 1, 2019

9 First, an important starter question to get us going: What can we say about psychotherapy supervision? We certainly, unquestionably, find ourselves at a most interesting and exciting time in supervision’s evolution. Supervision is now about a century strong, with its initial formal beginnings with Max Eitingon at the Berlin Policlinic in the early 1920s [2]. And what changes we have seen in psychotherapy supervision over the course of this past century! I do believe that we can safely and unequivocally, loudly and proudly, say that supervision has substantively advanced on a number of crucial fronts --- theoretical, empirical, practical, and educational; those advances clearly continue to be the case, and all indications are that that will remain strongly so in the years and decades ahead [3], [4]. We surely do not lack for promise and progress in psychotherapy supervision. 2. SUPERVISION AS SYSTEM, AS RELATION, AS PROCESS But how have we gotten here? Let me mention three major shifts in thinking that seemingly have radically altered all that supervision is and perhaps all that supervision will forever be. Those evolving and enduring major shifts, what we could also think of as those mega-shifts that matter, are: first, supervision as system , next, supervision as relationship and, last, supervision as developmental process . Whatever might be our vision of supervision; those three transformative shifts appear to loom large in how we think and what we do as supervisors. First, supervision is considered to be a system . Contrary to a century ago, our viewing supervision as a system now seems to be a readily embraced reality across all supervision perspectives. But it used to not be that way. Supervision itself was a type of one-person psychology: Focus was exclusively on the patient, the relational contribution of supervisee and supervisor was minimized or went unrecognized altogether, and the supervisor served more so as a proxy therapist essentially telling the therapist/supervisee, what to do in treatment [5]. That is so no more. Instead, we have come to increasingly think of supervision as a full-fledged triad, involving patient, supervisee, and supervisor— that each triad party has a psychology that each party’s psychology affects or can affect the psychology of the other involved triad parties, and that each party’s psychology in turn affects or can affect the supervision space [6]. The person and personhood of the patient, supervisee, and supervisor matter, and all that is person and personhood affecting matters as well. It all counts now, it all intersects, it is all supervision relevant, and all that is triadic and triadic affecting is now incorporated into the very fibres and fabric of supervision itself. Psychotherapy supervision neither exists nor occurs in an interpersonal vacuum.