| Abstract: | Conclusion Through this paper, I have tried to explore and illustrate the dynamics of the supervisory experience, in terms not so much of the content particulars as the subtle shifts in the interpersonal meanings of communication processes. Birdwhistell (1) has even gone so far as to suggest that  individuals do not communicate; they engage in or become part of communication. He may move, or make words ... but he does not communicate. He may see, he may hear, smell, taste, or feel—but he does not communicate. In other words, he does not originate communication; he participates in it. In a parallel fashion, supervasion is not a simple linear model of student presentation followed by supervisor's intervention, leading to student's further presentation or pause for questioning of what the supervisor meant.Supervision, in my view, is a system that is only to be comprehended on a transactional level. Future research in this area would do well to investigate just how the student analyst projects his counter-transference reactions with patients as transference projections onto the supervisory group, and how the induced reactions in the listeners (the supervisory group) can be used to recapture in very vivid fashion the atmosphere surrounding the analyst and the patient in session together. The answer to these questions would help to clarify some of the existing theoretical confusion regarding internalization, identifications, and introjections. This approach of participating leadership and the free use of the process emerging in the supervisory session helps to dispel the omnipotent parental transference image, and seems to lead to increased empathy, responsiveness, perceptivity and intuition in trainees. |
