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The task of a supervisor is twofold: in the first instance the supervisor is trying to assist in containing anxieties of the child in psychotherapy and to evolve a shared understanding of the child and the child and supervisee’s relationship; secondly, the supervisor has the task of furthering the supervisee’s capacities as a questioning, wondering, observing, effective and empathic psychotherapist. For this reason, I consider overseeing the work of psychotherapist and child as promoting the beauty of a duet for two, a development of two people, child and psychotherapist.
This commentary is written as a step-by-step discussion of the brief background and the sequential presentation of the psychotherapy session with Rebecca, aged seven, presenting with selective mutism. I discuss the interaction paragraph by paragraph in order that the therapist can watch the evolving minute changes both in the child and in himself/herself. This process of discussing the clinical material follows the model which I deeply appreciated in my supervisions with Dr Donald Meltzer, Mrs Martha Harris, Mrs Esther Bick and Dr Anne Alvarez.
Before she was three, Rebecca was exposed to conflict between her parents and an acrimonious separation between her parents. I assume that not only did she lose her father to his new relationship but also she experienced a mother distressed at being
unexpectedly left without a husband’s support, without the continuity of the paternal support for Rebecca. Certainly Rebecca felt something acutely at the age of three when she stopped speaking to her father, separated from her mother and did not use words to communicate to anyone outside the home, either in nursery school or in the primary school which she attended several years later. This does not mean that Rebecca was not communicating with her father, nursery and primary school teachers and peers; it simply means s