The Theory of Supervision in Psychoanalytic Education

During the past four years I have been Chairman of the Study Group on Supervision, 1 which is a subcommittee of the Committee on Psychoanalytic Education (COPE) of the American Psychoanalytic Association. I had the privilege of sharing in the experiences of the members and consultants of this Group which influenced my understanding of psychoanalytic supervision.

The theory of supervision in psychoanalytic education must be based on data concerning the student's growth, learning and acquisition of experiences during each phase of his training. Many educators have pointed to the limited nature of knowledge about these processes. A psychoanalytic theory of learning, which is evolving from contemporary studies not only by psychoanalysts, but also by workers in allied fields (see the references in Fleming & Benedek, 1966), hopefully will add to that store of knowledge. Nonetheless, psychoanalysts are well aware that observations based on students in training can provide essential data for such studies.

The literature on supervision has focused primarily on the techniques, methods of teaching and procedures for dealing with the actual problems that confront the supervisor. Ekstein & Wallerstein (1958) describe impressively the influence of various factors on supervision.2 Implicit in all of the contributions on the subject is the assumption of a 'philosophy of supervision'. The work by Fleming & Benedek (1966) attempts a unification of knowledge about both analysis and supervision, particularly of the relationship between the training analysis and the supervisory training. Their principal aim being a practical one, they conclude that a theory of supervision should be primarily a theory of teaching. In their view, the most promising course at the present state of knowledge is to study further the teaching process, in the expectation that such study will lead to a 'theory of learning based on psychoanalytic premises' (Fleming & Benedek, 1966). Contributi