Deconstructing Risk Management in Psychotherapy Supervision

In the ongoing controversy over how much regulation and standardization to impose on clinical practice and research, it is not surprising that the activity of psychotherapy supervision should be swept up in the drive for uniformity. The managers amongst us want to regulate and institutionalize all aspects of practice. In opposition, many clinicians resist the relentless march toward the safety of uniformity travel alongside managerial imposition of regulations. Psychotherapy supervision's method of a close apprenticeship relationship between supervisor and trainee and its focus on the process and ethics of professional interaction stand at the humanistic core of what is otherwise becoming an increasingly mechanistic model of providing care to persons with mental illness. Our commentary picks up on these themes as it reviews the work by Mehrtens et al about strengthening awareness of liability in psychiatry residency training programs. We argue that the practice of psychiatry is overburdened by documentation requirements. In imposing further record-keeping on psychotherapy supervision, we lose much more than we gain. We recommend that the supervisory process focus on the characterological virtues essential to functioning as an ethical therapist. We also argue that self-protective rules place restraints on possibilities for imaginative insights and innovations in psychotherapy.