IJSP Number 2, 2020

10 2.1. COMMONALITY-BASED VISIONS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY SUPERVISION: THE VIEW SO FAR A burgeoning base. Up until 2014, only four trans-theoretical/common factors supervision publications could be identified [27]. Three of those contributions [29], [30], [31] were conceptual in nature, the other one being empirical [32]. A number of other common-factors-focused supervision publications have since appeared, most emerging across these last five years [1-9], [33-40]. For a content summary across (most) publications, see Watkins [1]. What was earlier concluded about that burgeoning base of commonality contributions, their common message, still readily applies now: “(a) Supervision is most fundamentally a learning experience where the primary targets are therapist skills/competence and identity development; (b) the supervisor-supervisee relationship serves as the foundation of the supervision experience; and (c) the supervisor functions foremost from a stance of developmental responsiveness in stimulating supervisee growth…” [1, p. 142, italics in original]. A common factors, common processes, common practices perspective. Although I have long been interested in trans-theory and supervision [41], I have been especially interested in exploring and elucidating a common factors vision of supervision across this last decade. Again, the questions that have galvanized my study are these: (a) What are the ties that bind us together as supervisors? and (b) What do we all do that practically matters? In seeking answer, I earlier went “in search”, attempting to identify, demark, and define supervision’s common factors and practices [1]. My search strategy specifically involved the following: (a) examining supervision handbooks, books, and book chapters appearing since 1980 (the time of supervision’s transformative emergence; [42],[43],[44]); (b) examining supervision articles appearing since 1980 in supervision journals(e.g., The Clinical Supervisor ) or journals that publish supervision articles (e.g., Journal of Psychotherapy Integration ); (c) examining supervision competence frameworks (all largely products of the last approximate 15-year period; e.g., [45], [46]) and striving to remain informed about pertinent supervision happenings from around the globe; (d) studying, reflecting upon, and drawing tentative inferences about the myriad of common factor possibilities across those examined publications/ documents; and (e) based on that continued process of study, reflection, and hypothesis generation, developing preliminary lists of common factors and practices, repeatedly revising those lists as needed, and eventually arriving at a finalized group of lists that seemingly best captured a much reasoned, highly reasonable, solidly defensible core of supervision commonalities. My proposed view—what I have referred to as a common factors, common processes, common practices perspective [1], [2], [7] - identifies important supervision commonalities that cut across a host of critical areas. Some examples