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The Supervisory Encounter is not just an addition to the literature on supervision, but is the first to integrate traditional supervisorial techniques (Dewald, 1987; Fleming & Benedek, 1966; Wallerstein, 1981) with current ideas about the interaction between the supervisor, supervisee, and patient. It expands teachers' thinking about different perspectives in therapist education by considering, in the rich clinical examples that are offered, the advantages and disadvantages to any course of supervisorial action.
A variety of topics are covered in the book; I describe some of them here. There is a history of supervision that shows the origins of the current conflicts about teaching. Should supervision focus exclusively on therapists' understanding of patients, or should it also include the study of therapists' emotional reactions to patients? There are chapters that describe the modes of thinking that pertain to the psychotherapeutic process and can be taught to supervisees in helping them understand clinical material. How personal should the relationship be between supervisors and supervisees? What place is there for self-disclosure on the part of either? How challenging should supervisorial interventions be? Learning for therapists can lead to challenges in self-esteem, but these challenges can also be made by supervisees and apply to supervisors' potential vulnerability. How does one teach supervisees to tolerate strong affects, and how does one deal with affective reactions of supervisees that they are unaware of? Finally, the authors address issues around the termination of supervision that affect both supervisors and supervisees.
There are several main points that structure the authors' arguments. Supervisors should avoid doing therapy and aim the work toward being a mutual collaboration. There are some factors that make the supervisorial