IJSP Number 4, 2022

29 - How did I feel when, rarely, I was “watching over myself” after a supervision session where the supervisor did not manage the “group attacks” or t he way my colleague supported me? How many hours of self- analysis did I need after a group supervision session in order to reposition myself? - How did I feel when I changed supervision frameworks in hotel rooms or in the hotel lobbies where my supervisors were staying? The questions can continue and have been on my mind since the beginning of my career as a supervisor. Another concern refers to the adoption of a more professional and humane behaviour as a supervisor, assuming the fact that I can always make mistakes, but the more important that I can repair these mistakes as supervisor [8, 9]. We know that for a long time, supervisors obtained this title because of many years of practice, of academic activity, and not as graduates of specific courses or training programs for supervisors [10]. It is a reality and it makes no sense to deny it or pretend that things have so much different nowadays. During the last years, national and international professional associations are striving to start training programs for supervisors and to use as graduation criterion (among others and not only the only) seniority in practice as a therapist. The world is changing with astonishing rapidity, with social problems including war, poverty and more, making clients, therapists, and supervisors live in an insecure environment. We all need to be prepared for the unknown and to assume uncertainty as a matter of fact. The paradigm of the research practitioner is now shifted from the academic sphere to the real ambiguous area, and supervision is no exception. The supervisor’s gatekeeper role (among other roles) is designed to ensure that the supervisee lives and has the resources to adapt to an ambiguous reality, just as the supervisor needs to take care of one’s personal and professi onal self. This is a burden that has fallen on each of us and no one has asked us whether we want it or not. How do we teach this to psychotherapists and future supervisors? Personally, I think the solution doesn’t reside in literature, but in showing them that we there with them and that we do not lose our professionalism. We all learn on the go, how professionalism can be refined every time we are all subjected to the burden of our life and social issues. At the beginning of the supervision process, even if the supervisor’s roles are specified in the contract, the supervisee still has expectations from the supervisor that go beyond the scope of the contract. The supervisor is no longer the “good mother” or “swinging” as the psychotherapist would like; some times the supervisor’s suggestion can be a recommendation for personal therapy for the supervisee. Perhaps supervisors understand what I would like to convey here: the difficulty or challenge of finding with each supervisee that limit, which crossed leads to the psychotherapist role, a role so at hand for the supervisor. Supervision easily turns into therapy and the supervisor is the one who will have to refuse to cross that limit, no matter how insistent the supervisee is in asking for ... therapy from the supervisor. The supervisee goes through the process of creating the psychotherapist ’s identity with great turmoil during the supervision period: