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The supervisory relationship can be one of the most formative in our training and professional development, but we’re not always very good at talking about it. In contrast to the relationships between trainees and their patients, which are scrutinised at length and in detail, most of what is, or should be, going on in supervision is not talked about explicitly. In this very readable book, Nancy McWilliams does talk explicitly about all sorts of aspects of supervision, from the perspective of supervisees, supervisors, training courses, analysts, and the impact on patients, as well as giving some very helpful historical perspectives and relevant research findings.
One of the first things that struck me about the book was McWilliams’s conversational and pragmatic tone. For example, the final chapter, Getting the Most Out of Supervision, absolutely acknowledges the real-world context for many trainees who may find themselves navigating services where supervision takes place in the context of a high level of burnout in senior staff, and of ‘frequent implicit messages that the most vital concern … is not the care of each patient but the protection and survival of the agency’ (p. 187). In this case she suggests ‘your job is simply to survive as well as you can and be honest with your clients about the limits of the services they receive … [and to] keep reading’ (p. 187). Interpersonal challenges are discussed as well as organisational and political ones – for instance, McWilliams offers thoughts on how to work with supervisors’ idiosyncrasies, and make the best possible use of a supervisory relationship that does not feel constructive but cannot easily be renegotiated. She also includes a section in this chapter called ‘When the Problem is You’, offering straight-talking advice to make honest use of a good therapist or analyst during training and to use your therapy to discuss your supervisor’s feedback: ‘do this even if it stresses you out financially. There is nothing mor