Trainees Looking Through the Lens of a Supervisor: Remediation and Gatekeeping Responses to Hypothetical Problems of Professional Competency

This study investigated MFT trainees' perspectives of competency problems as they imagine themselves as supervisors. Trainees read seven vignettes and selected from 17 remediation responses (N = 21) originally designed for licensed supervisors (Russell, Beggs, Peterson, & Anderson, 2007). Consistent with the literature, respondents endorsed talking with the trainee as their first line of remediation and reserved dismissal for competencies related to dishonesty/fraud. Contrary to past research, trainees identified late case notes as a dismissible offense and were more lenient with untreated mental illness. Supervisors might consider orienting trainees to ethical decision making and remediation policies/strategies prior to their work in the field.     

Developing Dyadic Evaluation for Supervision: An Exploratory Factor Analysis

This study addresses the need for empirically validated tools to support the training, supervision, and the discovery of best practices in Marital and Family Therapy (MFT). This project represents a first step in developing the Dyadic Supervision Evaluation (DSE), an assessment tool that is grounded in developmental and systemic theory and is psychometrically strong. An Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) approach was applied to data from 88 trainee-supervisor dyads across four time periods during the first year of clinical training, resulting in 20 factors, including 9 factors for trainees and 11 factors for supervisors with internal reliabilities ranging from α’s = .82–.98. Discussion addresses the utility of the DSE in documenting the developmental and dyadic progression of supervision during the first year of MFT training.     

Electronic Communication in Supervisory Relationships: A Mixed Data Survey

Much has been written about online communication between therapists and clients, particularly regarding the feasibility, ethics, and frequency of such practices. Little, however, has been published with regard to electronic communication patterns between therapists and their supervisors. The purpose of this study was to understand if and how electronic communication is used between marriage and family therapy (MFT) supervisees and supervisors. To accomplish this, we administered a mixed data survey to MFT supervisors and supervisees across the United States regarding frequency of interaction via electronic methods. We also assessed comfort level with online supervision, how supervisory participants make determinations when to use online supervision, and when online communication is believed to be most appropriate within MFT supervision. We report both qualitative and quantitative findings regarding the use of online technologies in supervision. Implications for research, training, and supervision are discussed.     

Can MFTs Address Spirituality with Clients in Publically Funded Agencies?

Many marriage and family therapy (MFT) trainees and therapists working toward licensure are accumulating hours in publically funded treatment centers. The increasingly diverse clientele in the U.S. likely will be served in the public sector, especially as many states are providing more funding for county agencies and increased tuition reimbursement and/or loan forgiveness for students and graduates who work for these organizations. MFTs may feel ill-equipped to address spiritual issues in therapy at these sites, especially when grappling with ethical concerns. This article delineates a case example in which an MFT attends to spiritual issues when working with a family in a county mental health center. The authors illustrate how a therapist can navigate the ethical dilemmas of this case when working from a Bowenian perspective.     

Homonegativism and sexual orientation matching in counseling supervision

The present study examined the effects of sexual orientation matching and supervisory role on supervisory style and satisfaction with homonegativism as a covariate. Supervisory style significantly correlated with satisfaction for supervisors when trainees were heterosexual but not when trainees were lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Regardless of supervisor or trainee sexual orientation, the supervisors’ homonegativism significantly negatively correlated with trainees’ satisfaction and ratings of supervisors’ style. No significant differences in supervisory style were found among supervision dyads cross-matched for sexual orientation while controlling for homonegativism.     

Joining with resistance: addressing reluctance to engage in group therapy training

Although research has documented the effectiveness of group psychotherapy, trainees are often reluctant to embrace this modality. This reluctance may reflect an informed choice based on knowledge, interest, and skill. Alternatively, reluctance may reflect misinformation or resistance due to conflicted feelings that arise from group dynamics. The latter are a major obstacle to the success of group therapy training and treatment programs. Understanding the origins of this reluctance and the developmental challenges of group therapy for trainees better equips supervisors to address this difficulty. This article uses case examples to illustrate how trainee reluctance emerges. It also provides strategies for working with hesitant trainees. The success of group therapy programs rests on the supervisor's ability to manage trainees' inhibitions to group therapy.     

The Soul of Supervision: Counselor Spirituality

Because spirituality training for counselors and supervisors is vital to counselor development, the authors examined the relationships between purpose in life, the integration of spirituality into supervision, and the supervisory working alliance among a sample of supervisors and trainees. Supervisors reported a greater sense of purpose and spiritual discussion during supervision than trainees. Trainees' personal sense of purpose was positively related to spiritual discussions with a supervisor and to an emphasis on client issues in supervision.     

Sharing a multicultural course design for a marriage and family therapy programme: one perspective

The marriage and family therapy (MFT) field has made tremendous progress in acknowledging the importance of multicultural training. Nevertheless, multiculturally committed MFT trainers still struggle with issues of multicultural course design and delivery. In a subject so controversial and which requires a great deal of experience and skills to teach, little has been done in terms of sharing different multicultural course designs and working towards their implementation in MFT programmes. This paper presents a prototype curriculum of an introductory course in multiculturism in counselling for marriage and family therapy students with the overall goal of making trainees more multiculturally aware. It includes a few examples of strategies designed to aid the continuing infusion of multiculturalism into MFT programmes.     

Valuing Ideas of Social Justice in MFT Curricula

Training programs committed to the development of culturally sensitive family therapists must support dialogue that creates awareness of social structures promoting inequity and oppression. In order to facilitate meaningful conversations about issues of social justice educators have to critically examine their own philosophies and teaching methods to create a learning environment that promotes this dialogue for all students. This article outlines our philosophy of teaching and presents two core MFT graduate courses as examples of how issues of social justice can be valued in the didactic component of marital and family therapy (MFT) training.     

Race,racism and systemic supervision

The idea of ‘race’ and the social reality of racism have gained increasing attention in family and systemic psychotherapy. This article seeks to extend this attention by focusing upon the influence of race and racism in the supervision of family and systemic psychotherapy. The way in which the idea of race might be conceptualized is discussed, before looking at how race and racism have been addressed in the field. Attention is then turned to systemic supervision, focusing upon the ideas generated about how supervisors might position themselves in relation to these issues, the implications this might have for the supervisory relationship and the relationships between supervisees and client families. It is proposed that by virtue of the supervisor's position of power over the supervisee, it is the supervisor's responsibility to initiate conversations about race and racism. A proposal for this task is outlined, which recognizes that these conversations are ongoing. A concluding assertion is made that such conversations should form part of the evaluative process for trainee supervisors.     

Issues of Language and Culture in Family Therapy Training

Recent census data indicate continued growth in immigration trends as American society becomes increasingly diversified. Marriage and family therapy (MFT) training programs are also experiencing a growth in the number of immigrant students. As such, issues of language and culture play a progressively significant role in the MFT training process. The purpose of this study was to examine client, trainee, and supervisor feedback concerning the experience of therapy with non-native English-speaking trainees. Several themes emerged from the written and oral responses of participants. Implications for training and future directions for research are discussed.     

Consistency of supervisor and peer ratings of assessment interviews conducted by psychology trainees

Observation of counsellor skills through a one-way mirror, video or audio recording followed by supervisors and peers feedback is common in counsellor training. The nature and extent of agreement between supervisor–peer dyads are unclear. Using a standard scale, supervisors and peers rated 32 interviews by psychology trainees observed through a one-way mirror. Results indicated that peers and supervisors used similar dimensions to cluster the various competencies. Peers rated counsellor performance more positively for general counselling skills, but not for specialised techniques. Analyses revealed good supervisor–peer agreement for some items and poor agreement on others, with some differences being unacceptably large. The study has important implications for how feedback involving supervisors and peers might be managed and for peer supervision models.     

A Developmental Approach to the Supervision of Therapists in Training

Supervision is considered essential to therapeutic effectiveness yet trainees frequently report negative supervisory experiences. Although such experiences may be due to inadequate or poor supervision, more often they result from differing needs or expectations among trainees. Thus, supervisors must struggle to determine how to best conduct supervision. We propose that many negative experiences result from a supervisors inattention to the trainees development as a mature individual. By examining the cognitive and emotional development of trainees supervisors are offered a framework from which to select interventions and strategies that encourage rather than discourage trainees.     

Structural Family Therapy and Autism Spectrum Disorder: Bridging the Disciplinary Divide

ABSTRACT

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is an evidence-based practice approach for the treatment of individuals with autism. The systemic effects of autism suggest that family therapy would considerably enhance the treatment of individuals with autism. Marriage and family therapy (MFT) training does not routinely include exposure to autism beyond the associated diagnostic criteria. Structural Family Therapy (SFT) is a systemic model that is familiar to those trained in family therapy and appropriate for the needs of families affected by autism. Therefore, the authors have used SFT as a foundation for supervising MFT trainees working in an autism treatment setting.     

Case Conceptualization: A Strategy for Incorporating Individual,Couple and Family Dynamics in the Treatment Process

While market and regulatory forces have made case conceptualizations essential in individual, couple and family therapy, therapists, trainees, and supervisors are increasingly recognizing the clinical value and utility of case conceptualizations in everyday practice. This article describes and critically analyzes three main types of case conceptualization and argues that the client-focused type is the most appropriate in addressing theoretical and clinical considerations. A client-focused type with a phenomenological and systematic emphasis, called pattern analysis, is described. A detailed case study illustrates pattern analysis.     

Towards Multi-positioned Live Supervision in Family Therapy: Combining Treatment and Observation Teams with First- and Second-order Perspectives

This article describes a process of live supervision that has been designed to encourage trainees to experience competing theoretical perspectives. It involves the use of separate T (treatment) and O (observation) teams who conceptualise the same case from two broadly defined theoretical perspectives, variously called first and second order, modern and postmodern, or family systems and social constructionist. The process requires trainees to adopt multiple positions rather than identify with one perspective, and provides a basis for comparing and potentially integrating them. We provide examples of the approach, discuss important contextual issues for supervisors to consider when implementing it, and examine ways of adapting it to a wide range of training contexts.     

Conflicting internalizations: Effect on development of trainees' professional role

Training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy stimulates both trainee regression and development-enhancing intemalization of supervisors. The internalization processes of introjection, identification and ego-integration influence both trainees' personal development and development of a professional role. Since both supervisors and the personal therapist are introjected and identified with, the possibility of trainee-perceived conflict arises. Where the identifications seem incompatible, trainees will tend to reject the supervision if it is overly dogmatic. If their personal therapy is conflictual, trainees will apply ego-ideal and superego structures to their personal therapy experience and reject their personal therapist. The reasons for this choice suggest the possible value of supervisor-personal therapist collaboration and a supervisory stance of identification with the learning process itself.     

Close encounters of the third order kind

This article describes an exercise developed for assessing trainee family therapists' practice at the end of a placement year in a manner consistent with the third‐order positioning the trainees were endeavouring to adopt in their practice. Evaluation by the trainees confirmed that the exercise had provided them with a significant opportunity to co‐construct with the supervisors their practice learning and future learning goals.     

Confronting Our Own Hypocrisy: Being a Model for Our Students and Clients

Counselor educators, supervisors, and practitioners sometimes act in ways that contradict the most significant beliefs and values that they espouse. Despite communicating to students and trainees the importance of being caring, respectful, warm, flexible, honest, and personally competent, we are sometimes found to be operating quite differently. Issues related to the counselor educator, supervisor, and practitioner's narcissism, self-indulgence, abuses of power, illusions of omnipotence, prejudices, and unresolved issues are discussed. A case is strongly presented that we would all be a lot more effective if we worked to confront our hypocrisies and practice more what we preach.     

Behind the (Virtual) Mirror: Online Live Supervision in Couple and Family Therapy

Online therapy and supervision, a rapidly rising practice in couple and family therapy, has been the subject of a growing body of literature. From its early days, family therapy training has included live supervision, which has typically been conducted by a supervisor and a team of trainees situated on the other side of a one-way mirror. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 global pandemic, we—the staff of supervisors at the Barcai Institute in Tel Aviv, Israel—were compelled to find solutions to continue meeting with clients and to provide supervision for family therapy trainees. To this end, we have shifted our live supervision courses (“practicums”) to the virtual arena, adapting the popular application “Zoom” into what we call “PractiZoom.” Based on over 100 PractiZoom sessions conducted between March and May 2020, involving 14 supervisors and 28 therapists-in-training and their clients, the article reflects on this pioneering online practicum for the online live supervision of therapists with geographically distributed participants. In this article, we outline our operational methods and adaptations for conducting live behind-the-mirror supervision online. Following a short theoretical background, we outline the process of online live supervision, discuss our reflections and those of our trainees on the challenges and possibilities it poses, and offer a number of preliminary conclusions and recommendations.