Epilogue

Several common themes are expressed in various ways in these papers. The themes we wish to highlight and elaborate on in this discussion include the nature of the learning alliance in supervision, the continuing struggle to strike a balance between teaching and treating, the pleasures of supervision, and the need for training of supervisors.

Implicitly or explicitly, all of our contributors touched on the significance of the learning alliance in supervision. Many authors, including Dewald (1987) and Wallerstein (1981), have proposed and developed this concept as a dimension of the supervisory relationship analogous to the “therapeutic alliance” in the psychoanalytic relationship. In both domains, these alliances depend on the availability, reliability, honesty, responsiveness, and caring of the helping partner. And in both situations the alliance is expressed and experienced at the conscious and unconscious levels. To those qualities in the supervisor that contribute to the learning alliance in the supervisory relationship we would append sensitivity to the candidate's self-esteem regulation, particularly to his or her propensity to shame experiences related to the inevitable exposure of mistakes and shortcomings.

We concur that these are essential components of the supervisory learning alliance, but wish to propose that these factors be placed in a broader context that includes the supervisor's constant attention to the candidate's level of development as an analyst, strengths and vulnerabilities, and sense of self. All of these factors will influence the candidate's performance in clinical practice and in supervision at any moment. We have in mind here a problem-focused approach based on a global appreciation of the candidate as a learning person. Rather than a “hit and miss” approach in which the supervisor is solely guided by the immediate problems that emerge in supervision, we are