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This book follows an earlier volume, Supervising Psychotherapy, by the same editors and again offers a selection of chapters, each addressing a separate theme in supervisory work. Where the first book is a valuable text for beginner supervisors, as well as being useful to practising supervisors, the new volume is a more demanding read and there is less emphasis on practical application.
A skilful opening chapter by Edward Martin on the unconscious makes Matte Blanco's ideas accessible for those who find them useful, if not rendering them appealing to all readers. His other chapter is on shame and uses scriptural myths to consider how shame arises essentially from separation anxiety. He distinguishes eloquently between the experiences of shame and guilt before giving a case example from a supervisory group, where fear of shame prevented a neophyte therapist from thinking about erotic counter-transference and a boundary violation.
I liked his image of supervision for qualified therapists as a weekly workout for the unconscious and his emphasis that a necessary part of this workout is for the supervisee to engage with their shadow. Most interesting to me were his thoughts about the therapist's moment of shame after making a mutative interpretation; he aptly describes the impulse we often feel to cover our nakedness with a fig-leaf of superfluous words.
A chapter by Vernon Yorke provides a clear exploration of ‘Bion's “vertex” as a supervisory object’. Beginning from an intriguing analogy between post-modern art and Bion's concept of transformation, Vernon