IJSP Number 1, 2019

67 THE THERAPIST’S REFLECTION IN SUPERVISION. AN INTEGRATIVE STRATEGIC ANALYSIS STOICA Mihaela Alice 1 1 The Association of Integrative Research, Counselling and Psychotherapy (AIRCP), Romania Email: mihaela@hotel-claris.ro Abstract This paper proposes an analysis of the therapist’s reflection, an analysis of him/her self, of the client and of his/her relation with the supervisor. The therapist’s reflection takes into consideration the impact of therapist-client relations, this being the reason for analyzing the relation established with a client, who, during the first therapy session, generated resistances and blockages in the therapist. This issue was reflected on and discussed during supervision sessions. Keywords: reflection, supervision, supervisor, therapist. 1. INTRODUCTION. THEORETICAL FRAME The verb “to reflect” has its origins in the Latin term animum reflectere which means “directing thoughts towards something”. The term to reflect is also a synonym to thinking about, to taking into consideration, to trouble him/her self. This capacity of self-observation helps therapists during supervision to obtain a necessary distance from therapy and to analyse any existing personal conflicts regarding the relation with oneself or with the client. It also represents a superior form of the therapist’s intellectual activity, necessary in an orientation towards an individual content of concepts, with the tendency to critically analyse, to establish new connections and to insure a term validity of one’s mental construction. The lack of reflections leads to the lack of creation, elaboration and knowledge. It is strongly connected to intelligence and to the power of anticipating; it represents an authentic “interiorised form of human intelligence”. Through a personal case reflection, the therapist focuses on his/her interest and focalises one’s thought on problems which are sensed in a therapist-client relation, through an interiorised dialogue on that specific situation (a communication with the self, with the interior world, with possessed anxieties and challenges).