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‘In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes’, is a phrase popularised by the American statesman Benjamin Franklin. If we were to relate this to our work as child and adolescent psychotherapists, we might say that nothing is certain, except supervision. It is for all of us an ongoing part of our working life; one that will change and evolve as we move from trainee to qualified clinician, and in time become a supervisor ourselves. The word has much wider usage than within our field, and it is not at all obvious to those who do not work in mental health what we mean by it. Elsewhere, those who require supervision may be in training or deemed incompetent or unable in some way, and in need of support and/or scrutiny. It's therefore not surprising that it is a part of our practice that can provoke ambivalence in even the most seasoned clinicians. If we are to make use of supervision, we need to bring uncomfortable, messy, difficult material that we do not feel we understand, and be able to wonder about it with another person in the hope that some meaning may emerge.
‘Supervision in a Changing World: Reflections from Child Psychotherapy’, is a very welcome addition to the ‘Independent Psychoanalytic Approaches’ series. As the book editors Deirdre Dowling and Julie Kitchener reflect in the introduction, it is a subject on which our profession has remained ‘unusually silent’ (p. 1) despite the fact it is such an integral part of both our training and ongoing professional development. The editors use
the introduction to wonder about this omission, exploring why supervision in the psychoanalytic profession is such a tricky business. Kitchener parallels the supervisor's role with that of a parent in a playground and suggests they may feel an anxiety about how they can create a ‘safe space’ for their supervisee, ‘while allowing them the freedom to explore and develop’ (p. 6). The work of Balint (1948), Barnett (2012), and Casement (2005) is drawn o