Collusive Selective Inattention to the Negative Impact of the Supervisory Interaction,1

IT HAS BECOME INCREASINGLY clear to me that the traditional tutorial psychoanalytic supervisory relationship, because of its authoritarian tilt, may easily lead both participants to collude in a process of selective inattention. This collusion is to indications of the negative impact of supervision on the supervisee and on his functioning with the patient under supervision. It is my aim in this paper to identify and discuss those features of supervisory practice which are likely to disadvantage the supervisee and the treatment relationship; and to suggest how the supervisory relationship might be conducted so as to minimize its potential for negative influence, and to limit the development within the relationship of tacit agreements to take no notice of signs of this influence.

Fiscalini (1985) has discussed the issue of parataxic interferences in the supervisory relationship. He derives his understanding of such interferences mainly from a retrospective review of the varying impact of two successive supervisory relationships on himself and on his treatment of the same patient during the period that Fiscalini was a candidate in psychoanalytic training. The first supervisor focused mainly on Fiscalini's failures to confront "the patient's hostile security operations and his self-centered disregard for others." Fiscalini writes, "… My initial sympathy with the patient's plight and empathic feel for his anxiety were gradually submerged