You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Supervision, too often viewed as the neglected component of our tripartite model of psychoanalytic training, is the fortunate beneficiary of this book's attention. Unlike a number of other recent offerings on the subject, this enjoyable volume does not
focus on the process of psychoanalytic supervision. Edited by Rosemary Balsam, it instead offers a wide-ranging collection of essays, broadly focused on the subject of psychodynamically oriented supervision conducted in varied settings, and with an array of treatments derived from psychoanalysis.
All the contributing authors are members of a discussion group for clinical supervisors at the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society, a group that met on an ongoing, regular basis in 1992-1993. All members are on the faculty at the Yale Department of Psychiatry, representing the disciplines of psychiatry, psychology, and social work. They are obviously devoted to a scholarly examination of the supervisory process, as well as to an expansion of psychoanalytically derived supervision beyond the traditional analytic situation. Balsam succeeds well in her editorial efforts, presenting a work that not only surveys the current state of the supervisory art, but also challenges us to consider a vast, widening scope for analytic supervision in the contemporary world of mental health care.
One can understand most scholarly works from a number of different viewpoints. As I perused this volume, I found that two major perspectives emerged. The first is a straightforward examination of each contribution as the individual author's consideration of different components of supervision. The second perspective—more challenging for this reviewer—is a view of these essays as a collective reflection upon just how psychoanalysis interrelates with the broad, diverse, and often inhospitable world of contemporary mental health care (at the very least, a world inhospitable to psychoanalysis and to intensive psychotherapy). I will say a bit more ab