IJSP Number 2, 2020

75 Supervision in psychotherapy is both a personal and professional challenge. A personal challenge because neither of us can be exempted from transfer or counter-transfer (objective or subjective) in the supervision relationship. This may occur when the supervisor is both a training provider and an individual personal development service provider, the supervisee may project onto the supervisor certain experiences, perceiving the latter as an important person from his past (parent, teacher, mentor), the qualities of such a person being transferred to the person of the supervisor. In this case, supervision becomes problematic and can have a significant negative impact on the supervisee. Lev-Wiesel points out that the transfer processes „seems to express the operation of defensive mechanisms such as design, introspection, exaggeration and re-projection. Thus, the non-identification of the function of avoiding transferential reactions has the risk of preventing the confrontation with internal conflicts that need to be solved and implicitly of exacerbating them [4]. There are a number of patterns of interaction in problematic supervision, which lead to violation of borders. For example, if a supervisee flatters the supervisor by praising his exceptional qualities, the supervisor may find it difficult or impossible to give real feedback due to emotional blackmail. In all these, the transfer situation encountered in the therapeutic relationship may also appear. Adapting definition of transfer to the supervision situation one can say that the transfer can occur in the connection that is automatically and continuously established between the supervisor and the supervisee, updating the meanings and proving the subjective organization of the supervisee’s thinking [5]. Also, its interpretation may raise a number of issues. The same happens in case of countertransfer. Under these very important conditions, both the choice of the supervisor and the completion of individual personal development sessions with the solving of personal issues, which can later become obstacles to managing the relationship with the client, become very important. Countertransfer can also occur in the supervisor-supervisee relationship, everything depends on the personal equation of the two protagonists involved in the supervision relationship. Objective countertransfer refers to the feelings and thoughts the supervisee induces to the supervisor. Also, the objectivity of countertransfer also refers to the fact that these feelings and thoughts can be induced to most people [6]. Other cases may involve personal services provided by supervisee to the supervisor: the supervisee may go shopping with the supervisor (becoming a friend) or the supervisee may know more than the supervisor in a certain segment of theory or specialty literature changing the balance of power. Two large categories also differ in objective countertransfer. The first category involves the feelings, thoughts and actions of the supervisor evoked as a result of the supervisee’s transfer, while the second category includes the supervisor’s own feelings and thoughts which reflects his/her ability to be contaminated with the