IJSP Number 3, 2021

39 psychotherapist has to – at least in her/his early professional stage – undergo supervision. Why is that? Why do they not proceed directly to do what they learned in school, university, or during the long years of training? Do we still need some old-fashioned apprenticeship like in the Middle Ages? Moreover, do we nowadays have all that time, energy, and passion to meticulously apply to such a sensible profession as psychotherapy? Additionally, where do those supervisors acquire their knowledge and qualification? Is there some special school or training where one can get a degree in supervision? Bearing that in mind, it seems only appropriate that every beginner therapist has to go through supervision in order for her/him to clarify some difficult issues that can appear in the practice of psychotherapy. Moreover, there is the issue of transfer and countertransfer to discuss as well, or any other problem that surfaces, or keeps emerging in the initial therapeutic sessions. Other aspects that can also emerge are those concerning the therapist-client relationship with all its subtleties or the untold issues that lurk under the surface of human niceties, benevolence, and good intentions such as hidden agendas or deceitfulness. As such, supervision is nothing more and nothing less than the chance to clarify or appease issues that a beginner therapist cannot manage or approach unconcerned or unprepared. If the supervisor helps the novice therapist in her/his difficult and sensitive path, the question that remains is who does that same task for the supervisor? The supervisor assists in answering hard to answer questions, or to bring to the foreground some difficult-to-access items from the unconscious of the supervisees. However, what makes the supervisor such an expert in awareness of deep and arduous-to-express aspects of the psyche, by putting her/him in such a far to reach detachment from the general human emotional involvement? Is she/he rather a super -human being, merely because she/he is a super -visor? Is she/he indeed qualified to be on that wonderfully high pedestal of a super -being – above the commonality of the supervisee, always understanding and rational? Moreover, if there are some special qualities to being a supervisor, what are those qualities? Indeed, what does one need, or know, or study, to become a supervisor? Is there any college degree, or a master, or a doctoral thesis required? Alternatively, does it suffice to have some training in some therapy school, or is it merely a course one can attend somewhere? Is it possible that the theories taught in universities or in a doctoral school qualify somebody to be an expert who can supervise others? Alternatively, are the practical aspects, and the subsequent expertise acquired in multiple therapy sessions that provide such a qualification? Could it be that all those factors joined together, and the years of practice joined with the experience of detachment or self-differentiation, can lead to the specific expertise needed to be a good supervisor (and the same goes for the psychotherapist as well)? If that is the case, we still have to ask ourselves if all that is sufficient. Is it, for that matter, sufficient to learn the theory, and to have the practice and the experience of years of therapy in order to transfer all that knowledge and expertise