IJSP Number 5, 2023

25 is similar, who understands because they have had a like experience, and whose shared experience is confirming. Attunement is provided by the therapist valuing the need for confirmation by revealing carefully selected personal experiences -- mindfully (i.e., client-focused) sharing vulnerabilities or similar feelings and fantasies -- and by being personally present and vital. 5. Self-definition is the relational need to know and express one’s own uniqueness and to receive acknowledgment and acceptance by the other. Self- definition is the communication of one’s self-chosen identity through the expression of preferences, interests, and ideas without humiliation or rejection. 6. The need to have an impact on the other person refers to having an influence that affects the other in some desired way. An individual’s sense of competency in a relationship emerges from agency and efficacy -- attracting the other’s attention and interest, influencing what may be of interest to the other person, and effecting a change of affect or behavior in the other. 7. The need to have the other initiate refers to the impetus for making interpersonal contact with another person. It is reaching out to the other in some way that acknowledges and validates the importance of them in the relationship. To respond to the client’s need it may be necessary for the psychotherapist to initiate a dialogue, to move out of their chair and sit near the client, or to make a phone call to the client between sessions. The therapist’s willingness to initiate interpersonal contact or to take responsibility for a major share of the therapeutic work normalizes the client’s relational need to have someone else reach out to them. 8. The need to express love is often expressed through quiet gratitude, thankfulness, giving affection, or doing something for the other person. The importance of the relational need to give love—whether it be from children to parents, sibling, or teacher, or from a client to a therapist—is often overlooked in the practice of psychotherapy. When the expression of love is stymied, the expression of self-in-relationship is thwarted. Too often psychotherapists have treated clients’ expression of affection as a manipulation, transference, or a violation of a neutral therapeutic boundary. 4. THE SUPERVISOR’S ROLE We find that an important focal point in this initial stage of supervision is the supervisor’s capacity to investigate and identify three important dimensions: first, we use phenomenological inquiry to identify which relational needs (of both the client and, possibly, the supervisee) have been unsatisfied --- either in current life or in childhood; second, we explore how any unsatisfied relational needs are manifestations of internal contact interruptions; and third, we strive to identify interruptions in interpersonal contact between the supervisee and us. We look for what may be avoided in the therapeutic relationship and endeavour to identify if the relational disruption reflects internal disruptions to contact with either the client or supervisee. We are particularly attentive to how interpersonal contact interruptions may indicate unconscious internal disturbances such as denial (a cognitive process), disavowal (repudiation of affect), desensitization (loss of