IJSP Number 4, 2022

36 Working Together, Working against Each Other, and Working Past Each Other in Therapy and Supervision. A Gestalt Psychological View on Structure and Dynamics of the Therapeutic Relationship FUCHS Thomas 1 , STEMBERGER Gerhard 2 . 1 Society for Gestalt Theory and its Applications, Department of Psychology, University of Bonn, Germany 2 Austrian Association of Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy (ÖAGP), Vienna, Austria Emails : ThomasFuchsPsycho@t-online.de, g.stemberger@aon.at Abstract Crises in therapist-patient relationship can also become a challenge in clinical supervision. However, success and failure in establishing and maintaining constructive relationships in therapy and supervision is not only subject to a lucky fit of personal characteristics (therapist A gets along well/badly with client B; supervisee A gets along well/badly with supervisor C). Rather, we can identify determining field conditions in the overall therapeutic and supervisory situation for this outcome. We do not only focus on the persons involved, but also on their environment, the task to be accomplished together, further framework conditions and the power relations resulting from their mutual influence - in the supervised case of therapy as well as in supervision itself. We want to examine the structure and dynamics of these relationships from a genuine Gestalt psychological perspective. What contributes to a cooperative atmosphere? When do goals get out of sight? What can make the atmosphere hostile? How do such developments become accessible in supervision? Key words: Gestalt psychological perspective, clinical supervision, psychotherapy 1. Introduction Understanding psychotherapy and clinical supervision as the mere application of certain techniques and interventions and largely excluding the effects that the persons involved have in the process, contradicts in essence what psychotherapy and clinical supervision are about [1], especially within the framework of humanistic/ hermeneutically oriented approaches. Whether psychotherapy or supervision is helpful or not depends largely on the persons involved and the nature of their encounter and relationship. What makes alliances in psychotherapy and clinical supervision strong or fragile is an important question. Even more crucial seems to be the question of what´s happening in moments of crisis. In their meta-analysis about “ alliance rupture repair ” , Eubanks, Muran & Safran state (referring to therapy alliance): “ Alliance ruptures present research challenges because they are both obstacles and