Psychotherapy supervision: Stages, Buber, and a theory of relationship.

Abstract

Theoretical efforts in psychotherapy supervision have focused on supervisee stages. In this article, a review and synthesis of the major stage theories is first presented. Second, a stage theory of supervisor development is presented. Although attention has been directed to the supervisee and, to a lesser extent, the supervisor, the process of supervision has not been conceptualized per se, Typically, theories applied to supervision are overlays of theories of psychotherapy. In the third part of this article, supervisory phenomena are distinguished from psychotherapy phenomena, and the nature of the relationship in psychotherapy supervision is described. In the final part of the article, I present Martin Buber's concept of relationship and subsidiary concepts such as /-Thou, I-It, gaze, stress, and change, and internal structure as a theory that is most fitting for the supervisory process. There is an irony confronting practitioners of psychother-apy supervision. Is psychotherapy supervision a domain that calls for a theoretical understanding in its own right, or is it sufficient to adopt theories from psychotherapy, tinkering with a concept here or a process there, in order to elucidate