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Joan Sarnat, a psychologist and psychoanalyst practising in California, has written a helpful guide to the supervision of psychodynamic therapists. She has read an impressive amount of literature and makes some very good points, which this reviewer will discuss shortly.
Unfortunately, the cover of Supervision Essentials does not warn the potential enthusiastic reader that the writing therein is subject to what can only be called an unfortunate use of the defence of splitting. As we learn in the first few pages, and keep on learning throughout the book—stated openly at some times and more subtly at others—the relational approach is good; the classical approach is bad. And in case we slip up and forget that the relational approach is anti-authoritarian (read: anti-classical—that is, the classical approach from 100 years ago), Sarnat's persistent use of the pronoun she drives it home in almost every page—especially when she refers to the (lowly) supervisee as “he.” To put it succinctly, the relational way of working described here is seen to privilege the supervisee/patient in a way that relational therapists imagine therapists working from other perspectives do not.