My Experience as a Supervisor: Church Staff to Psychoanalytic Students

As I recall, my first attempt at supervising someone was a suummer youth minister intern (1981.) I was her supervisor for three months. I do not think it went very well. I had no knowledge and no experience in supervision so how could it have gone well?.........My next opportunity to supervise came while I was a pastor. In conjunction with a seminary, I supervised graduate interns for two years while they served as associates. I supervised five students over a period of ten years. This went better. The seminary gave me some training in supervision, and I had learned a bit of psychoanalytic theory and practice by then. I utilized this knowledge in establishing supervisory relationships with my interns..........But my first supervision of psychoanalytic therapy students was not until I was in psychotherapy practice. I prepared to do supervision by obtaining five years of analytic therapy supervision myself, followed by a year of supervision of my supervision. Supervision of your supervision means an experienced supervisor coaches you in providing supervision to students. I also was approved by the State Board of Counseling to be a LPC Supervisor. I remember a student who was doing a masters degree in counseling in order to become an LPC ( Licensed Professional Counselor.) As in most LPC training programs, the students are taught the dozen or so major theories of psychotherapy, and the common principles of psychotherapy technique. Psychoanalytic theory and practice is just one of those twelve orientations to psychotherapy. Luckily this student was quite interested in psychoanalytic work........... So we began. He started as a practicum student, remained on as an intern, and then decided to do his residency with us as well. All of this supervision took five years. Having little experience in supervising student therapists through these various competency levels, I was not confident in how to proceed. So at first I basically supervised him and others the way I was supervised. I did read a half dozen books on psychoanalytic supervision along the way. I will share those titles later. The structure I decided on was this: We would meet weekly for an hour. The first week would be didactic, and I would teach him psychoanalytic theory and psychotherapy technique. The second week would be more traditional supervision where he would bring in his therapy cases for us to discuss. We would precede with that format for the full five years. Of course to pass the LPC Exam in VA you have to know the other eleven therapy orientations as well. We agreed to explore those orientations enough to pass the Exam! My supervisee's patients were patients in our Center. He had his own office and got great experience in group private practice. I will share later some of what I taught him and others, and several of the texts used in the process.( Please feel free to ask a question or make a comment.)