IJSP Number 6, 2024

44 general structures,methods and categories, as well as intuition and understanding. The focus is on the supervisee's work, reconstructing and reflecting on what has happened in the treatment. What assumptions are there, how does the supervisee see their client, what feelings are remembered, both their own and those of the client, etc.? The focus is on helping the supervisee to achieve emotional and methodological depth. The aim is for the supervisee to be able to use their skills and abilities and, in the best case, to expand them. 2.4. THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE In difficult supervisory and psychotherapeutic processes, it is important for supervisors and psychotherapists to have a solid theoretical knowledge in order to be able to act to the best of their knowledge and belief. Lewin's famous sentence, "Nothing is as practical as a good theory " 7 [12 p. 5; transl. by UW] The difference ultimately lies in the starting position. The client is a person seeking help for a personal problem. Psychotherapist and client meet in the therapeutic space. The supervisee is a questioner for a professional problem. There is a triangular relationship between the supervisee, their work assignment and the supervisor. underlines the usefulness of engaging with theoretical knowledge. It can be helpful and fruitful for reflecting on and analyzing practical experiences. Defining therapeutic knowledge is not easy, as it involves competencies on many levels. Theoretical knowledge is an essential basis from which methods, interventions and attitudes can be derived. At the same time, this also corresponds to a scientific requirement that is necessary within psychotherapy research and increasingly also in supervision research in order to be able to examine the benefits and effectiveness of theoretical concepts. In addition to theoretical knowledge, the experience acquired in the course of training and professional practice is also an essential part of our skills. Especially when we learn from them to name and reflect on events and processes. Supervision plays an important role in this learning process. Sometimes we can only understand processes better and more comprehensively by reconstructing the treatment situation and reflectingon events. 2.5. TACIT KNOWLEDGE Another aspect of knowledge should be emphasized here. M. Polanyi [13] introduced the term “tacit knowledge”. The term comes from the English, "tacit knowing", it is more about a skill than a knowledge, "we know how something 7 Original quote from Kurt Lewin: “Nichts wäre so praktisch, wie eine gute Theorie.“