IJSP Number 2, 2020

64 The supervisee mentioned what bothered her most about the case: “Is the rape story real? I think L. A. might be lying to me.” The supervisor offered an unexpected answer: “I see you used the words “the rape story”. Another helpful question was: “What can you say about your trust in people?”, and then “Who does your client remind you of?”. At that moment I remembered a childhood nasty experience, when one friend did something bad in relation to another friend. I probably felt betrayed. This was a very popular girl in the circle of playmates, and being an introvert person, and lacked the courage to solve the “betrayal” with that popular friend (and the client resembled her, not physically, but by way of manifesting herself); I didn’t dare confess what really had happened to the others, out of shame and the belief that no one would offer protection to the shy, introvert child, over the pampered, popular friend, everyone loved (according to one’s conviction). Supervision allowed to open a gate to reflect upon what was transferred from the childhood friend to the present client (a projection of the friend who betrayed). Another of the supervisor’s questions concerned the personality pattern and lead to a new revelation: working with the client on the emotional management aspect was also an important difficulty. The tendency of always being rational and the need to control were perceived as under threat because of the client’s excessive emotions. One of the confessed frustrations was connected to the client’s incapacity to respect the therapeutic framework and her inconsistency in terms of appointments. Even worse, she wouldn’t call to cancel when dropping out the therapeutic session or wouldn’t call back to reschedule a new appointment when asked to do so. As therapist I felt discouraged and wondered what I did wrong, as with other clients I would manage to solve therapeutic framework problems, whereas with her I felt disarmed. From the dramatic triangle perspective, the client wanted the therapist to be the saviour, while I felt as a victim. According to the Self perspective, I tried to be the normative parent, and she would “play me” as the rebel child. Setting limits is extremely important, therefore a therapeutic framework is vital, but this is precisely where the HPD client encounters difficulties. Therefore, after discussing these issues in supervision, I realised that the therapeutic framework was not as urgent as initially believed and managed to rethink it differently. It was much more useful to reflect upon the manner of empathising with the client in those moments and on the experience built during the therapy session. I found empathy difficult and sometimes chose a critical or ironical attitude. Gaining awareness of this blocking point, I reflected on the specific moments of critical / ironical attitude and focused more on analysing the impact on personal life or on those past aspects with sufficient impact so as to trigger such reactions (the supervisor’s questions that generated reflection: “When exactly do you