Michael Fordham's Theory and Practice of Supervision

We owe a great debt to Michael Fordhma for his contribution to supervision over a period of thirty or more years. He has always seen supervision as an initiating, integrative journey, during which the supervisor fulfils the archetypal role of initiator; he neither analyses it nor interprets other unconscious processes, but builds on the energies available to a student's ego; for supervision is separate and different from training analysis in Fordham's view. This distinction has become more necessary as transference has taken on major importance, since the transference that belongs to the training analysis on one hand, and that which belongs to teaching on the other, can only have due care if they are kept separate. It follows that analysts should not teach their analysands nor supervisors analyse (FORDHAM 1, 2)

The separation of supervision raises problems about handling the trainee's countertransference (which Fordham points out but does not analyse), and teaching him to use it in his work (FORDHAM 2). In 1969 Fordham reviewed Racker's book on countertransference (FORDHAM 5). Racker had said: ‘the danger of exaggerated faith in the messages of one's own unconscious is less than the danger of repressing them and denying them any objective value’ (RACKER 15).

Fordham had been thinking similarly and commented: ‘In supervision the importance of showing up the countertransference gets renewed importance from Racker's book and a way of approaching it in a positive light is opened up. Countertransference is first a matter for the candidate's own analysis, but once conscious its use can be worked out in supervision’ (FORDHAM 4).

This led to a description of the trainee's illusory countertransference, in which he stressed the importance of integrating the trainee's own experience in analysis with his work with patients (FORDHAM 6). An account of the trainee's syntonic countertransference as a source of information followed (FORDHAM 8). There he suggests