Resistance to awareness of the supervisor's transferences with special reference to the parallel process

Supervision is an essential part of psychoanalytic education. Although not taken for granted, it is not studied with the same critical eye as is the analytic process. This paper examines the supervision specifically with a focus on the supervisor's transference towards the supervisee. The point is made, in the context of clinical examples, that one of the ways these transference reactions may be rationalised is within the setting of the parallel process so often encountered in supervision. Parallel process, a very familiar term, is used frequently and easily when discussing supervision. It may be used also as a resistance to awareness of transference phenomena within the supervisor in relation to the supervisee, particularly because of its clinical presentation. It is an enactment between supervisor and supervisee, thus ripe with possibilities for disguise, displacement and gratification. While transference reactions of the supervisee are often discussed, those of the supervisor are notably missing in our literature.