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.
Why do we, in the training of psychoanalysts, place such emphasis on supervision? Why do psychoanalytic societies require candidates to take cases under supervision as the final and deciding test before a candidate achieves acceptance as a member of his society?
The supervisor participates in the candidate-analyst's analytic work during the sensitive period in his training, in between becoming and being an analyst. The generally accepted purpose is that the supervisor should, could, may, act as an intermediary in bringing together psychoanalytic experiences, theories, knowledge, with its application in practice. We can formulate the intention in this way: that through supervision, the connection between psychoanalytic thinking and the persons who represent and practice psychoanalysis, is introduced to the candidate-analyst. One recognised way of expressing the rôle and the object by introducing supervisors is that the supervision of the candidate's own cases fuse into a whole, the candidate's knowledge taken from reading, tuition, seminars with own experiences absorbed through all senses and tried out by own functioning in the psycoanalytic encounter.
What really goes on in supervision to realize these expectations?
In the supervisory situation, all three participants enter into a common, and for them, unknown enterprise. The analyst now starts to use himself as a listening, empathic and structuring instrument—the only fragile instrument he has at his disposal. He must use special mental acts to reach an understanding of another person, among them, sympathy and empathy