IJSP Number 3, 2021

102 wounds and cling to special defenses in reactions to failures that create significant problems in learning [15]. Brightman [16] as thoroughly elaborated narcissistic issues of supervisees, the development of their professional self-image, and efforts to maintain it, as well as how these issues impact the phenomenology of their training experience and their interactions with supervisors, patients and peers. Accordingly, the supervisory setting reviews narcissistic dynamics and defenses in therapists, which belong to preceding life stages. Brightman explains three narcissistic aspirations (omniscience, benevolence and omnipotence), making up the supervisee’s grandiose professional self . The nature of the psychotherapy setting, confrontations and contradictions fail the therapist’s image as the all-knowing, all- loving, and all-powerful therapist; as a result, the trainee identifies with the idealized supervisor who supports and values him and clings to special defenses to maintain his self-esteem and defend against narcissistic injury. However, while these defenses help the supervisee to maintain his self-esteem, this fragile equilibrium breaks down very soon and is followed by signs and symptoms of depression and morning. The establishment of a new, less perfectionist ego-ideal derived from the supervisory relationship puts an end to this process. I also noticed strange behavior from the beginner levels therapists, some of them having their first experience as therapists. What I found weird was that despite knowing that psychoanalytic psychotherapy is a complicated process and demands expertise and knowledge from the therapist, knowing that they lack such requirements and the treatment failure risk is high, this group of therapists insisted on having the sessions in one-way mirror set, where the supervisors and graduate students observed them. This group of candidates might be motivated by masochistic, guilty and punishment-seeking therapeutic failures. Putting oneself in a situation where the likelihood of a failure is highly probable is considered a masochistic behavior. Another issue that almost all of the trainees deal with is the experience of anxiety in the training process. Anxiety is the supervisee’s steady companion; trainees endure a significant amount of anxiety through their training as learners, a less experienced therapists, and as one who is under the microscope. In my own supervisory experience, to my supervisor’s surprise, I did not experience noticeable anxiety. This might be due to the fact that I experienced my supervisor as a kind, emphatic and knowledgeable person whose goal was to enhance my professional growth. However, in the one-way mirror setting, trainees experience varying degrees of anxiety that most of the time derives from the likelihood of being criticized due to their poor performance in sessions by junior students. Training and supervision are experiences that prompt regression in the trainee and produce severe fragmentation anxiety or loss of self-cohesion [17, 18]. Hanoch [19] has focused on the candidates’ anxiety during supervision, which stems from multiple sources. Accordingly, trainees may become anxious due to