IJSP Number 2, 2020

69 1.2. EMPATHY IN SUPERVISION Supervision in psychotherapy is a switch from theory to practice and the beginning of practice under the guidance and model of a supervisor. The supervisor is seen as a mentor in psychotherapy by the therapist who has completed basic training. I consider the supervisor a mentor from several point of view: first, from a professional point of view, having already done hundreds of psychotherapy sessions, mastering techniques, achieving therapeutic successes and learning from failures; and, on the other hand, a mentor, from a human point of view, the supervisor teaches through supervision, at your own pace, not giving up the human side with clients in psychotherapy sessions, and also demands to be there for the client, especially through support and empathy. Supervision involves two interpersonal relationships between the client, whose case is supervized and the therapist, and between the supervisee and the supervisor, and empathy is a critical process in these relationships. The supervisor uses empathic capacity and theoretical knowledge to understand the supervisee’s clinical activity and to create a relationship with him, thus creating an emotional and intellectual exchange in supervision. The progress of a case can be pursued by developing empathetic understanding in supervision. Empathy for the supervisee or its lack will be seen in the presentation of the case, in supervision, the supervisor is empathic at the same time with both the client and the supervisee. In the majority of cases, the supervisor moves back and forth along this empathic bond, this being a method of understanding the case and managing supervision, connections that were made are used for this purpose [4]. In supervision, the supervisee talks about clients’ cases after the therapeutic process has ended, or between sessions, understanding them as the target of supervision, and the supervisor’s empathy during the supervision process helps this process [1]. Reflection helps to discover new perspectives in the interaction between the therapist and the client, as well as in the interaction with the supervisor [3], when the supervisee presents a case in supervision. 2. SUPERVISED CASE STUDY As a psychotherapist in supervision, realizing that in the therapist-client relationship something is not working, I brought the case to the supervision session. According to Vîșcu, during the discussion with the supervisor, “the supervisee learns how to move away from the experience with the client, in the cognitive area and to provide answers to some questions” [3]. Being well guided, I learned in supervision, how to analyze from a reflexive point of view, I understood that being focused only on the cognitive plan with the client in question, the emotional channel has been blocked, including empathy.