An investigation of some relationships between psychotherapy supervision and patient change

Psychotherapy supervision has been investigated extensively, but the literature reveals few controlled studies and none that directly assesses the effects of supervision on psychotherapy outcome. In this study, two aspects of psychotherapy supervision--the amount of supervision, and the congruence of theoretical orientation between the supervisor and trainee--were studied in relation to patient change as measured by pretherapy and followup ratings on the Global Assessment Scale (N = 237). Amount of supervision was not found to be related to therapy outcome, but patients showed significantly greater improvement when their trainee-therapists reported theoretical orientations congruent with those of their supervisors.