IJSP Number 5, 2023

28 which they can include their client in redefining the objectives of psychotherapy. We encourage the supervisee to ask their client questions about how they experience psychotherapy and to use the answers to those questions to reorganize how treatment may be working. The answers to these types of questions provide the supervisee with a broader perspective; they are learning from their client. The supervisor guides the supervisee’s awareness by having them focus on the sensations and physical reactions occurring in the supervisee’s body as they report the case, observing the supervisee’s physical reactions, and then verbalizing and discussing those reactions during the supervision session. This cognitive exploration of the supervisee’s experience often strengthens both the therapeutic alliance and the supervisory relationship. An essential aspect in this level of supervision is our attention to the transference/countertransference matrix. We encourage the supervisee to form a developmental image of the client at various childhood ages. We invite our supervisees to explore their fantasies about their clients as a means of enhancing their capacity to attune to the client’s possible unexpressed affect, relational needs, and level of developmental functioning. We facilitate the supervisee’s ability to distinguish between a reactive countertransference (non-therapeutic) and responsive countertransference (therapeutic). We explore various ways to convert our developmental images or responsive countertransference into phenomenological and historical inquiry [9]. We strive to attend to countertransference in a non-defining, non-pathologizing way that removes the possibility of shame; rather we view countertransference as an agency in understanding the client’s unaware and unexpressed story. When the supervisee is at the third level of the Supervision Pyramid, the level we call Experimentation and Reinforcement, our focus is on consolidating and reinforcing what the supervisee knows. This consolidation phase often leads us to experimenting with additional ways that the supervise can be therapeutically involved with their client. We invite them to explore new theories and methods and to assess their effectiveness in their work. We encourage the supervisee to make use of relational inquiry with their clients through questions such as, “We did something different today. How did you experience it? Is what we did right for you, or do you wish we had done something different?” [14]. We stress the importance of the supervisee’s full awareness in the here-and-now moment of what they will do in their therapeutic meetings with the client. The following are supervisor strategies that we may use to enhance the supervisee’s awareness on their own internal dynamics and to enhance their capacity for interpersonal contact: Management of the supervisee’s potential frustration is often attended to through some of the following questions. "I wonder if you are feeling some dissatisfaction right now?”; “If you are, how might you manage it?"; “Is your frustration only with one client or do you feel this way with others?”; “What sense do you make of your frustration?”; “Might you be frustrated with our supervisory relationship?” Awareness of parallel processes is another important part of level two supervision. We recognize that our supervisee is likely to be in parallel processes