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Karnac Books has published this monograph for the European Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the Public Health Services. So it is meant to reach a wide audience of supervisors in a range of situations, including hospices, institutions, and private offices. The foreword by Robert Wallerstein and the introduction
by Brian Martindale are important to read first, since they provide cohesion for this mostly disparate collection. The title, therefore, is somewhat misleading insofar as it is ambiguous about the location of the vicissitudes: they are not those within the supervisory couple but refer to those within the larger context of public health.
León Grinberg launches the book, discussing the basics of supervising psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy with supervisees who are having their own experience of personal therapy. He gives examples of supervision that illustrate parallel process, transference, and countertransference, and what he calls “projective counteridentification.” This last concept is important to distinguish from countertransference: projective counteridentification, he says, belongs in the supervisory process because it is precipitated by the patient, whereas countertransference belongs in the supervisee's own analysis. He also addresses transference issues and defences within the supervisor/supervisee relationship.
Victor Sedlak then tackles the psychoanalytic supervision of untrained therapists, focusing on dealing with negative countertransference as the most frequently arising source of problems. He stresses the importance of helping supervisees accept the limits of psychotherapy in working with very damaged patients.
Montserrat Martinez del Pozo elaborates the idea of the “learning position” (which is to supervision what the therapeutic alliance is to therapy), and the different psychic positions (after Bion) in the supervision process during a four-year training. He also discusses these positions in the interaction between