Listening to and Sharing of Self in Psychoanalytic Supervision: The Supervisor's Self-Perspective

Just as the analyst's self-perspective is critical to effective analytic process, the supervisor's self-perspective is accordingly critical to effective supervision process. But the supervisor's self-perspective has received virtually no attention as a listening/experiencing perspective in the psychoanalytic supervision literature. In this paper, the author defines the supervisor's self-perspective and considers five ways by which it contributes to an effective supervisory process: (1) sharing one's own impressions of/reactions to patients; (2) sharing personal disclosures about the supervisee-patient relationship; (3) sharing personal disclosures about the supervisee as a developing analytic therapist; (4) sharing personal disclosures about the supervisor-supervisee relationship; and (5) using one's own self-reflection as a check and balance for supervisory action. The supervisor's self-perspective provides the missing supervisory voice in the triadic complement of subject-other-self, has the potential to be eminently educative across the treatment/supervision dyads, and serves as a prototype for the supervisee's own development and use of analytic (or analyst) self-perspective.