IJSP Number 5, 2023

15 transference issues interfere with full contact between the supervisee and their client. While listening to the supervisee present a case I may ask myself the question, “In addition to telling us about the client, what is the supervisee revealing about their self ? For example, one trainee described her client as being “scared to death” to get angry. In our supervisory dialogue we discovered that she was hesitant to encourage any expression of anger. With further inquiry I discovered that the supervisee had been afraid, throughout her early adolescence and as a young adult, to be angry with her invalid mother for fear she would die. After identifying this as a personal therapy issue the supervisee agreed to work on it immediately in the supervision session. I facilitated the supervisee in dealing with her unexpressed anger with her mother and her childhood belief that “expressing anger is dangerous.” I think that it is part of the supervisor’s task to be sensitive to what is avoided or not talked about in supervision such as anger, money, health, or sex and how such avoidances might reflect unresolved therapy issues in the supervisee. Supervisees will periodically present a client or select a recording of their psychotherapy sessions that describes an aspect of their own personal difficulties. This may be evident in the supervisee’s not hearing incongruities in clients’ statements, agreeing with script beliefs such as, “There’s nothing I can do,” or the failure to see the parallel process, or how the problem the client is describing is occurring in the relationship with the therapist. Personal problems may also be evident in how the therapist designs treatment plans. If, for example, a therapist continually uses one approach with all clients, such as behavioral change contracts or emotionally expressive work, the supervisor might question whether that approach is what the supervisee needs and is projecting onto the clients, or is a way of avoiding something that is needed personally. Whether the supervision is in the form of formal cases presentations, spontaneous discussions, attending to audio or visual recordings, or observing the supervisee actually conducting psychotherapy with a client, I think of five areas in which the supervisee’s personal issues may be revealed: I. Contact — Is the supervisee responding to the client’s experience? Does the client seem to feel understood? 2. Introjection — What characteristics of the supervisee are not attended to in the psychotherapy with the client? For example, is the client’s father similar to the therapist’s father or teacher? 3. Projections — Is the supervisee overly empathetic with their client rather than challenging the client’s frame of reference? Does this reflect the therapist’s own limitations? 4. Retroflection — What emotions or behaviours are not encouraged by the supervisee and do these indicate areas in which the therapist holds back or is troubled? 5. Enmeshment — What role does the client play in the supervisee’s fears, plans and desires? One therapist who had difficulty with termination discovered that he was relying on his clients to fulfill his needs to feel important. Even though supervisees may be in, or have been in, personal psychotherapy, some disturbing issues may only become apparent when supervisees present their