WHAT’S NEW IN PARALLEL PROCESS? THE EVOLUTION OF SUPERVISION’S SIGNATURE PHENOMENON

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - The concept of parallel process has played a central role in psychoanalytic supervision for the last 60 years, generating continuing interest in...     

Learning from experience in case conference: A Bionian approach to teaching and consulting

In case conferences as well as didactic seminars, the power of the group can bring psychoanalytic education to life. However, primitive anxieties activated by group dynamics may also interfere with teaching and learning. The authors offer the example of a stalemated private practice case conference that had unconsciously organized against learning as the members began to read Bion's work. The case conference leader, an analyst, presented her case conference, which was mired in basic assumption dependency dynamics, to our peer consultation group. Drawing upon Bion's early contributions on groups, as well as his later ideas about thinking and mental growth, the peer group facilitated the case conference's return to work-group functioning and learning from experience. Activated in the peer group, commensal container↔contained processes gradually spread throughout the entire relational system of peer group, case-conference leader, case-conference members, and patients. This example underscores the importance of promoting within our institutes a culture in which faculty view themselves as part of an evolving intersubjective matrix that works to foster the containing capacities of candidates, patients, and faculty alike.     

Supervising Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: Present Knowledge,Pressing Needs,Future Possibilities

Existing research from the fields of education, cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychoanalytic psychotherapy points us toward possibilities for the future of psychoanalytic supervision. This research suggests that we need to go beyond communicating abstract knowledge and make our supervisory relationships more experiential, participatory, relationship-focused, and personal in order to teach usable knowledge, develop complex psychotherapeutic skills, and facilitate emotional and relational development in our supervisees. The author concludes that a relational model of supervision fits this pedagogical profile. After grappling with our resistances to change, the author hopes that more psychoanalytic supervisors will make use of a relational model of supervision, as well as drawing upon new technologies and neuroscience-based teaching techniques.     

Working With Disruption in the Supervisory Relationship: Introduction to Panel

In this panel Emanuel Berman and Joan Sarnat present examples of supervisions in which anxieties disrupted their work with psychoanalytic candidates. These authors, as well as discussants Franco Borgogno and Tony Bass, concur about the importance of enlarging the scope of the supervisory process beyond the traditional focus on the patient and on supervisee countertransference, narrowly defined, when such disruptions occur.     

Disruption and Working Through in the Supervisory Process: A Vignette From Supervision of a Psychoanalytic Candidate

This paper describes the author’s supervision of a psychoanalytic candidate, including the development and resolution of impasse in both the supervised analysis and the supervisory relationship. When the author became aware of the degree to which her own anxieties and defenses were implicated, she sought consultation, after which both supervision and analysis moved forward. As supervision continued, work on supervisee’s and supervisor’s interlocking anxieties and defenses, and understanding of their impact on the supervised analysis, deepened. The author concludes that exploring supervisory disruptions allows both members of the supervisory dyad to come to grips with conflicts that subtly distort their work and facilitates a deepening of the supervised analysis.     

Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Intense Involvement in Sports,edited by Irwin Hirsch,Phillip Blumberg,and Robert I. Watson,Jr., Routledge,Abingdon and New York, 2021, 193 pp.

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -