IJSP Number 2, 2020

9 But as we continue to benefit from that vibrancy and ferment, I have continued to wonder about two most fundamental supervision questions: (a) What are the ties that bind us together as supervisors? and (b) What do we all do that practically matters? Those questions have long fascinated and frustrated, excited and plagued me. I have wanted to better understand: Is there a common core that defines supervision practice? If so, what are those supervisory essentials? I subsequently take up those questions, sharing with you some of my efforts to provide answer. 2. PART I: FOCUS ON A COMMON FACTORS PERSPECTIVE I begin by giving specific focus to and elaborating upon a common factors supervisory perspective, one of those recent second-generation models. My reasons and rationales for doing so are: (a) it is my fundamental contention that all psychotherapy supervision approaches are grounded in and guided by a nomological network of binding commonalities that enlivens and invigorates, directs and determines, and actuates and actualizes supervisory action [1], [2], [6], [7]; better understanding the specifics of that nomological network, bringing more definition to supervisory conceptualization and conduct, could be of potential benefit to all supervisors and their practice [10]; (b) “Common factors models are especially important because they attempt to address the infrastructure of supervision” [10, p. 69)]; with any such identified infrastructure by definition being trans-theoretical and, thereby, having trans- theoretical supervisory salience and implications, it would again seem highly important to better understand those ever-present, practice-affecting commonalities so potentially important for us all; (c) articulated trans-theoretical and common factors supervision perspectives remain rare[1]; it was only six years ago that Bernard and Goodyear [27] rightly recognized that, “Although there is frequent reference to similarities among supervision approaches, there is little published literature on the topic” (p. 60–61); but if common factors supervision models do indeed make a “distinct contribution” [10, p. 68)], let us work to better explicate just how that is so; and (d) it may well be that, in becoming a supervisor, “to develop an integrationist perspective probably is inevitable” [28, p. 108)]; if that is so, developing a more defined portrait of supervision’s integrationist commonalities would seem most instructive in our being able to most informatively meet that inevitability; may we work to develop that portrait into realized practical reality.