My Experience as a Supervisor of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist Students (Part II)

The approach I took with the student supervisee that I spoke of in my earlier post, is basically the approach that I continued with all my future students--one week of teaching and one week of supervision over the duration of their supervision experience. So instead of writing about how all the students were different and how I had to adjust the supervision process to each one's particular needs, etc., I am going to write about what their supervision processes had in common........... Several of my students did stay with me for up to five years. Others were here for a shorter time period. I will mainly focus on those who did the five year, long term, supervision from practicum students, to interns, to residents........Let me start with the books I used to help me further learn how to supervise. The first one is Clinical Perspectives on the Supervision of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (1984), edited by Leopold Caligor, Philip Bromberg, and James Meltzer. The second book was, Learning Process in Psychoanalytic Supervision: Complexities and Challenges (1987) by Paul DeWald. The third text was written in 1995 by Daniel Jacobs, Paul David, and Donald Jay Meyer. It was titled, The Supervisory Encounter. The fourth supervision book was Glen Gabbard's Long Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy( the last chapter on Supervision.) The final text I studied was entitled, The Supervisory Relationship, written in 2001 by Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea and Joan E. Sarnat. In addition to these books I would also read various articles and papers on psychoanalytic supervision that came my way through journals, etc. One of those was by Otto Kernberg, published in 2010, Psychoanalytic Supervision: The Supervisor's Task. Another was by my friend and colleague Jerome Blackman on an example of analytic supervision.......... All of theses sources were helpful, but even more helpful was hearing cases presented at psychoanalytic conferences, and further hearing how the analysts/therapists would supervise the person presenting the material. These were not formal ongoing supervision sessions, but I found them very helpful in seeing how the analysts/therapists doing the supervising would listen, formulate, and comment on the case material. I further found it helpful to hear my colleagues present cases in our monthly group continuous case study. As enriching as all of these readings and experiences have been in doing supervision, they did not specifically address how to teach psychoanalytic theory, practice, and technique to students with little or no background in psychoanalytic treatment. For this task I also attended conferences and read articles on psychoanalytic teaching. Over time I developed a notebook with my charts, notes, diagrams, etc., that helped me teach my students about theory and practice. I also used books on psychoanalytic theory and practice to help guide the students. Part of their contract with me was that they would read the books assigned. I will share some of those books along the way through these posts.......... Of course the main way a student learns how to do psychoanalytic psychotherapy is by "actually doing it." Over the period of five years these LPC students would see approximately 15 clients a week, for individual and couples therapy, including adults, adolescents, and some children. Analytic psychotherapy training is tripartite. It consists of didactic courses, supervision, and your own personal or training psychotherapy. Although I could not require personal psychotherapy for my students, I did strongly encourage it. But in the end it was the fourth element of training that taught the students the most, and that was their experience with their patients in the room, week after week, in long term treatment. I will say more next time.