Supervising Female Therapists: A Comparison of Dynamics While Treating Male and Female Patients

Gender differences in psychoanalytic treatment and in dynamic psychotherapy have only recently become the focus of clinical research and exploration. A long-standing tradition within psychoanalysis asserts that the analyst's gender is of little importance because the patient replicates important transference configurations irrespective of it. Recently, however, a number of observers (Person, 1985a; Meyers, 1986; Moldawsky, 1986) have explored differences within the four possible gender dyads and have found that initial transferences, transference sequences, and the relative length and intensity of various transference manifestations are indeed influenced by the gender of the analyst.

This shift in the climate regarding gender and therapy opens the door to considering the effect of genders in the supervisory triad on the therapeutic process. Although the extensive literature on supervision frequently emphasizes the dynamics of the complex interactional system formed by the triad of supervisor, student, and patient, e.g., in the attention drawn to parallel processes between patient and therapist, and therapist and supervisor (Searles, 1955; Gediman & Wolkenfeld, 1980; Caligor et al.,