Integrative Approaches to Supervision

Margaret Tholstrup, Michael Carroll

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9781846421976
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Psychothérapie

As new techniques and approaches to supervision attract interest within therapy-related professions, the contributors to this informative book consider the nature of a supervision and examine the ways in which it can be further defined and developed. Drawing together practical and theoretical perspectives, Integrative Approaches to Supervision examines the contribution that supervision can make within both organisational and individual settings.

The book covers frameworks and models for supervision, supervision in clinical practice and issues within integrative supervision. Topics include: different models of the supervision practice; anti-oppressive practice; spirituality and supervision; counselling supervision in health care; supervision of organisations; self-protection for supervisors from complaints and litigation. Wide in scope but rich in detail, this book is essential reading for psychotherapists, counsellors, consultants and students involved in the supervision process.

PART 1

Models and Frameworks of Integrative Supervision

Chapter 1

The Cyclical Model of Supervision

A Container for Creativity and Chaos

Val Wosket and Steve Page

It has been suggested that we need a new term for the activity we call ‘supervision’, yet the word itself seems adequately to reflect the functions and tasks ascribed to that role. The dictionary definition describes a supervisor as an ‘overseer’, a word that conveys a sense of taking the broader view. A supervisor is someone who can cast a detached yet concerned and compassionate eye over the landscape of counselling practice and, in so doing, can often pick out the detail that hovers at the supervisee’s peripheral vision and which is not always clearly seen.

Perhaps the suggestions that arise for a change of name reflect a growing recognition of the complexity of the supervisory tasks and process. Maybe some commentators feel that we need a more grandiose title to accompany the increased sophistication of the role that is now described and analysed at great length in the growing literature on supervision. The burgeoning of models and approaches to supervision that has occurred over the last decade can be greeted with some alarm. Even now, novel approaches to supervision are appearing specifically designed to accompany the newer counselling models of brief and solution focused therapy (O’Connell and Jones 1997; Selekman and Todd 1995). The alarm is about the danger that supervision, like counselling and psychotherapy, may come to suffer from an over-proliferation of models, schools and approaches. As Goldfried and Pradawer (1982) have observed there indeed ‘comes a time when one needs to question where fruitful diversity ends and where chaos begins’ (p.3). A genuine hazard related to the proliferation of supervision models is that an over-emphasis on techniques and set procedures will ensue in which simplicity, humanity and spontaneity are elbowed out as the unseemly bedfellows of carefully planned interventionist strategies. The velocity with which new models of supervision are bursting forth suggests it might be a helpful time to pause, review and assess where we are at this stage in the growth and development of supervision. This steady stream may soon turn into an avalanche from which it may become increasingly difficult to dig our way out and gain a clear view of key landmarks in the surrounding landscape. Some landmark questions relating to the topic that have immediate currency might be:

•why have a model of supervision?

•how, if at all, is a model of supervision better than no model?

•does a supervision training course require a core model?

•what are the tasks and purposes of a supervision model?

•what are the disadvantages and dangers of using a supervision model and how might they best be avoided?

This chapter will attempt to offer a response to some of these fundamental questions. As a prelude to so doing, it is useful to be clear about what we mean by supervision in the UK as opposed, say, to what is usually meant by supervision in the US. In America, supervision is considered to be a necessity for trainees and interns and, not surprisingly therefore, has a strong educational component. For licensed professionals supervision is variously viewed, depending on perspective and circumstance, as lying somewhere between an impractical luxury and a remedial necessity when things go wrong (Carr 1994). And while training for supervisors is now well established in this country, in the US specialist training for supervisors it is not widely seen as necessary. Indeed, there have been suggestions that incentives may be needed to encourage would-be supervisors to attend training courses. Kaslow (1986) is one of the few American writers who advocates training for supervisors working in educational institutions. Yet in order to get them to attend training events she suggests (and this seems to be a serious suggestion) that they are offered perks in the form of enhanced ‘library privileges, and/or free parking on busy campuses’ (p.7).

In Britain, though it is beginning to be challenged in some quarters (Feltham 1999; 2000), supervision is still generally viewed as a career-long requirement for practising counsellors and psychotherapists. The attitude that most therapists in the UK today hold towards supervision was summed up recently by one of our first year counselling students. On her end of year course evaluation form she highlighted supervision, which she had never encountered before, as one of the best aspects of the course and described it as ‘a luxurious necessity’. In this chapter we are taking the view of supervision, arguably predominant in the UK, that it is a necessary part of ongoing professional development for the counselling practitioner.

In setting out our own position, we believe that we need to be able to account for how we work as supervisors. We should be prepared to give a considered rationale for this to our supervisees in the same way that we believe we have an obligation to our counselling clients to de-mystify the therapeutic process for them as far as is possible. We hope to argue that becoming thoroughly grounded in a best-fit model of supervision goes a long way towards achieving such accountability.

So, why do we think we need a model of supervision? As counsellors we are required to work within our known areas of competence. We adopt assessment and intake procedures that allow us the space to reflect on whether we have the skills, experience and personal aptitude to help particular clients with their specific areas of difficulty. As supervisors we do not generally have the opportunity to engage with such an extended reflexive self-assessment process. We are normally obliged to respond in the moment to whatever our supervisees bring – whether or not it is something we have come across before or worked with ourselves. Usually we will have no idea about what our supervisees might serve up to us before we sit down with them to listen to their dilemmas. A couple of recent examples of encountering the unexpected within my own experience [Val] as a supervisor and supervisee illustrate the point:

My supervisee tells me that she has recently been on a religious pilgrimage. One of her clients is aware of this and in the session when she next sees him after her return, he asks her if they can hold hands and pray together. My supervisee tells her client that she needs to think about this before making a response and she brings the dilemma to me. It is one I have never faced myself.

I take to my own supervisor my work with a client who is beginning to disclose experiences of extreme sadistic childhood abuse, including sexual, psychological and physical torture. My supervisor tells me that this is the worst case of abuse she has heard of and that she has never dealt with anything like it herself.

How does the supervisor begin to know how to respond to such situations? Borders (1992) makes the simple but crucial point that in making the transition from counsellor to supervisor, the becoming-supervisor needs to make a cognitive shift from thinking like a counsellor to thinking like a supervisor. This involves, primarily, a shift in focus from the client to the counsellor. She suggests that supervisors who think like supervisors rather than like counsellors need to ‘ask themselves “How can I intervene so that this counsellor will be more effective with current and future clients?”’ (p.138). Supervisors who fail to make this shift are more likely to approach sessions ‘well prepared to tell the counsellor what they would do with this client’ (p.137). As Borders suggests, the likely result then is that ‘supervisees become surrogate counselors who [merely] carry out supervisors’ plans for counseling’ (p.137).

Having a model of counselling supervision can help the supervisor answer the question ‘How can I intervene so that this counsellor will be more effective with current and future clients?’ A model of supervision can provide both a container for holding and a process for working with the unknown and the unexpected. A supervision model should, above all else, help release power in the supervisee to enable the clients – rather than first and foremost empower the supervisor. Thus the cyclical model of supervision, which is discussed below, is intended to promote the autonomy of supervisees more than it is to educate them. The model provides a container that can hold the counsellor in and to their task, even when the supervisee might be dealing with something their supervisor has not encountered or even imagined – and therefore may well not be able to educate the supervisee about.

Do supervision training courses need a core model of supervision? The counselling arena has recently hosted a vigorous debate between those who support a core model of counselling for training courses and those who question the necessity of a core model (Connor 1994; Dryden, Horton and Mearns 1995; Feltham 1995; 1996; 1997; 1999; Horton 1996; Wheeler 1998). The time may now be ripe to take this debate into the supervision arena, given the recent rapid increase in training courses in supervision in Britain. Some of the arguments in favour of core models in supervision training might be placed under the following headings.

1.Providing knowledge and security. When people are learning about counselling or supervision they require a reasonable amount of certainty and consistency in order to be able to invoke creativity and risk taking. A core model can provide the beginning supervisor with a clear idea of the operation of the supervision process and a sound repertoire of enabling interventions. From a secure base provided by a core model trainee supervisors can then further refine and develop their own styles of supervision in response to additional influences such as the needs of specific counsellor and client populations and the requirements of different organisational contexts.

2.Establishing a reliable framework. Having a reliable and familiar framework that is well known and integrated can encourage innovation and flexibility while helping to contain the high levels of anxiety to which a trainee supervisor can succumb as they make the transition from counsellor to supervisor. The supervisor who is learning to venture out on his or her own has, in the core model, a safe and certain ‘parent’ to return to and look back upon when a steadying presence is needed. Beginning supervisors will inevitably lose their footing on occasion and need to know that when this happens they can fall back on and be guided by a tried and trusted model.

3.Providing way markers. Frank (1989, p.109) has argued that the ‘rationale and ritual’ of a theory or model of therapy can provide a foundation that gives counselling trainees their initial impetus, confidence and direction. Similarly, a core model of supervision provides the necessary way markers to help a beginning supervisor find a set route through the complex maze that is the supervision process until experience comes to provide a more innate sense of direction.

4.Averting the danger of random eclecticism. Corey, Corey and Callanan (1993, p.216) have likened the counsellor who operates without an explicit core theoretical rationale to the pilot who attempts to fly a plane without instruments or a map. The same analogy translates to supervision where initial allegiance to a clearly differentiated and sufficiently comprehensive core model gives the novice supervisor a range of systematic operating procedures. This in turn lessens the likelihood that he or she will engage in undisciplined manoeuvres, which may result in the unfortunate supervisee ricocheting from the effects of one haphazard intervention after another. Supervisors who have not subjected themselves to the disciplined study of one extended philosophy and methodology of supervision are in danger of spewing forth a random application of techniques. Such behaviour is more than likely driven by desperate efforts to get ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Of Related Interest
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1: Models and Frameworks of Integrative Supervision
• Part 2: Supervision in Clinical Areas
• Part 3: Issues in Integrative Supervision
• Epilogue: Supervision in the Millennium
• Contributors
• Subject Index
• Author Index