What is clinical supervision?
Clinical supervision is, for the psychotherapist, a tool, a support, and an important source of inspiration for the psychotherapist for navigating those deserts and swamps that the therapeutic journey with patients so often presents along the way.
It is a relationship between therapists—supervisor and supervisee— build on deep collegiality, mutual esteem, and trust, aimed at the well-being of the patient in the supervisee’s care as its ultimate aim.
Supervision is a necessary practice for any psychotherapist who intends to carry out their work ethically.
What it is for
Clinical supervision is a useful tool for professional learning in which the supervisor acts as a consultant regarding the supervisee’s professional, ethical, administrative, and financial responsibilities.
In its educational adimention, the supervisor can take on a theaching role – for example, guiding the therapist in writing a clinical case, or pointing to the relevant literature on the condition being treated.
But above all, supervision is the relational space in which the therapist is supported in developing their own self-awareness as a therapist.
Every therapist, through their personal psychotherapy, learns to recognise their own experiences and vulnerabilities, and knows that these elements also play a role in shaping the psychotherapeutic field. Attention and sensitivity — understood as psychotherapeutic competencies — in relation to the quality of the relational and therapeutic field find support in the sharing with the supervisor.
The presence of the third perpective—that is, supervision with its own theoretical approach, even simply as a thought or bodily memory during a session with the patient — helps the therapist avoid unintentional re-traumatisation of the patient and/or repair any relational ruptures that may arise.
How to choose your supervisor
The choice of supervisor is therefore essential. It is common practice to choose a psychotherapist with more experience, who has completed specific training in supervision, and who belongs to the same theoretical model in which the supervisee trained. Sharing the same language and participating in a common conceptual framework are solid foundations for building a secure relationship. Communication is clear, the processing of experiences takes place within a context consistent with one’s training, and assimilation is supported by the ease of a familiar environment.
At the same time, it is also very common to choose to work with a supervisor from a different approach — usually someone met during other training experiences, toward whom esteem and trust have developed over time. In this case, supervision also becomes an opportunity for encounter with the new: new concepts, new perspectives on relationship and experience. Assimilation becomes rich and expansive for the therapist. Assimilation is “abundant” and developmental for the therapist.
Format of supervision
Regardless of the approach, supervision can be carried out in two ways: individual or group. The frequency of meetings can range from once a week to once a month, or simply whenever the therapist is aware of the need.
Here too, the therapist can choose the format that suits them best or choose both for different therapeutic situations and relationships.
In individual supervision, the supervisor’s attention is focused entirely on the material brought by the therapist. The supervisor’s support for the therapist’s learning and self-awareness unfolds within a dyadic relationship.
In group supervision, in addition to working on one’s own clinical case, the therapist can also learn from the clinical experiences brought by colleagues. The supervisor-therapist relationship is embedded in a group dimension, whose echoes and resonances become new material that the supervisor receives and works with, allowing the therapist to find new enrichment and growth.
Another supervision format is Intervision: it takes place in a small group of three to six colleagues and the relationship is entirely peer-to-peer. This format is recommended when the years of work and experience are such that a didactic and training guide is no longer needed, yet there remains a felt need for nourishing exchange with equally experienced colleagues.
Phenomenological-Gestalt supervision
Supervision in the phenomenological-Gestalt approach embodies the theoretical foundations of Gestalt psychotherapy, such as phenomenology, dialogic relationship, field theory, figure/ground dynamics, creative-adjustment, contact-boundary, paradoxical theory of change, etc.
It is the therapist’s task to offer a safe place where the patient can experiment and experience themselves. Awareness of one’s own body and the relational field in which one is immersed, along with the modulation of one’s presence throughout the phases of the therapeutic process, are essential competencies for the therapist — and it is within supervision that these are supported and developed.
Due to its vocation for listening and presence, phenomenological-Gestalt supervision is particularly suitable for both young therapists taking their first steps in the profession and experienced therapists who have been practicing for a long time.
