Richard Mizen

Introduction: Thinking about Supervision

The idea for this book emerged from a series of twelve-week supervision events called Thinking about Supervision, developed and organised in the late 1990s by the editors on behalf of the Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP) for qualified analysts, psychotherapists and counsellors. Some of the ideas to evolve from these events, both in the talks given by members of the society, and in the subsequent small group case discussions, prompted us to think further about the nature of the supervisory process. We then invited some of the contributors who gave lectures and others with a special interest in supervision, to develop their ideas into cohesive chapters. We hope the book will be of interest to Jungian analysts around the world as well as to psychotherapists and counsellors supervising therapy in different institutional settings and in private practice.

From Practice to Theory: Evolving a Theory of Supervision

Supervision is such an established part of analytic work that the question, ‘What is it for?’ would be considered rather ridiculous if it were ever asked. The need for supervision is intuitively understood. Supervision is a manifestation of an internal process that is inseparable from the work of analysis and cannot be considered as an essentially different activity, but only as part of it. One cannot think about analysis without supervision because, to borrow Winnicott’s idea, one can no more think about analysis without supervision than one can think about a baby without a mother. In both cases, the former could not exist without the latter.The link between analysis and supervision seems to be absolute, whether supervision is considered as a meeting between two people or as an internal dialogue (Knight, Chapter 2).