Supervision's Difficulty with Itself: A

Supervisee's View of the Process

Written by Gretchen Heyer

Jungian analyst Gretchen Heyer explores the unique power dynamics of the
supervisory relationship and suggests that subversion is an essential element in
the success of supervision.

Supervision's Difficulty with Itself: A Supervisee's View of the Process

This paper began as a talk at the IRSJA spring conference a few years after I
completed training and has grown from there. In addition to Jung, I draw from
thinking of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. These theorists claim neither Jung
nor psychoanalysis, yet they have peered into the analytical process with insight
for how it works. My focus is on the particular type of supervision that a candidate
experiences in the training process, the difficulties, the conflicts and missed
connections.
Some of these more problematic elements are woven into the nature of
supervision as the instrument of practice is the personality of the practitioner.
Personal and professional mingle, at times merge. Boundaries are not clearly
marked. Then there is the training institution with its hierarchy rather than
collegiality, a hierarchy often perceived as much out of unresolved states from
childhood as it exists in reality. There are the many facets of theory itself, on which
we have projections, idealizations and denigrations. All these energies thrash
about in the supervision consulting room with various degrees of consciousness
and unconsciousness.
In order to flesh out some of the ambiguities, I want to offer a caricature, not a
real person or situation, but an amalgamation of things I have heard, experienced
and imagined. A candidateI will name this character Simon Robbinsis working
on cases for graduation. Simon is in his forties with no children and in the midst of
marital difficulties that have risen, in part, out of time conflicts with training, and
in part out of his analysis. His wife moves out.

For his primary supervisor, Simon has chosen Geena Verso, a prominent woman
analyst in the city known for her Jungian approach to object relations. Geena is
engaging and deeply invested in the workas is he. For a time harmony exists as
Simon learns some of the nuances of object relations, and Geena refers him to
various books to facilitate his process.
Here it may be important to consider some characteristics of those of us interested
in analytic professions. While we may be rebels in some way, even more than
rebels, we want some blessing from the establishment. We are good girls and
boys. Whatever our parental relationships, to some degree we believe in the
society and system of which we are a part, at least we believe enough to obtain
various academic credentials indicating we know how to conform in an
organization. A Foucaultian view of this would reveal the ways we consider such a
process normative. We have absorbed the values of our larger society, our training
society, and for the most part we perpetuate them. Or another way of saying this
would be: a form of compliance is rewarded in supervision, compliance that
increases in complexity as supervisees gain their analytical authority.
Our supervisory couple, Geena and Simon, have become increasingly collegial. She
shares bits of her private life with him, and when she hits marriage difficulties she
also mentions these. Simon feels responsible for her, as he does for all women in
need. In a caring fashion, he asks her more about her difficulties. She tells him. To
complicate matters, Simons long case requiring fifty hours with the same
supervisor is that of a very dependant and hysterical woman named Belle. He is
somewhat lost in his work with her, frequently investing long hours in the drama of
Belles life with the sense that he is doing little good analytically. Geena is
increasingly frustrated, telling Simon that he does not understand what is really
happening in Belles case, that he is getting lost in superficialities and missing his
patients underlying schizoid rage and alienation.
These dynamics come to a head when Geenas office building floods. She asks
Simon if they can use his office for their scheduled supervision session. Healways
the nice guy to women in needagrees. It is in the midst of this session that
Simon begins to have some idea that boundaries between himself and Geena no
longer work for him. He is aware that he feels responsible for her, and she may
even collude in making him responsible. He tries to speak about this, and about his
sense of obligation that caused him to agree to the supervision session in his
office. She becomes outraged and informs him that it is just supervisionthat he

has issues with women and gets too invested in their needsjust as he has done
with his mother all his lifeand in his case.
Because of where he is in his personal analysis, it is no longer OK with Simon to
merely accept a blanket disclaimer of responsibility while he shoulders the blame.
He tries to bring the conflict up again and again in months to follow. Each time
Geena becomes irate, drawing analogies between Simons confusion in the analytic
work, and in the supervisionpointing out the murkiness that is always there, and
how it is his task to sort through the case he is working on with her, as well as his
confusion about their relationship.
Simon is increasingly disillusioned. His previous idea of object relations was that
the process of the case would be as much a part of supervision as the content. He
had something of a parent/child idea of supervision, assuming the supervisor
would be the one to interpret their relationship as it impacted the patient. He feels
ripped off and used, even victimized. In an effort to claim his analytical authority,
he confronts Geena on how she has allowed intricacies of their relationship to go
unexamined, naming the way they had both colluded to overlook what was
happening between them as it impacted the work with Belle. Geena maintains her
parental role, telling him this is further indication of his difficulty with authority,
particularly authority with a woman, and such issues will hold him back in his
training.
Tensions escalate as Simon approaches his forty-first hour on the case. Simon
considers working with another supervisor, but to do so would be to forfeit all the
time and money he has already invested, as well as abdicate his responsibility in
the relationship. But if he continues with Geena, the dynamics have become so
contorted that he no longer feels the necessary ground of trust to risk and learn.
Stepping back from Simon and Geena for a moment, it seems glaringly obvious
that the process of supervision keeps the supervisor in an evaluative role with
stated and unstated expectations. The supervisor is also under scrutiny by his or
her peers who have opinions of both the work and the trainee. Supervision is not
strictly confidential. This creates an additional burden on the supervisory couple to
conform and be normative to the supervisors notions, perhaps even to his or her
performance needs, as well as to the expectations of the larger training society
with its crises of the moment, its agendas, its projections. The risk of any

organization is that it can work to perpetuate itself and in some ways, it may exist
to be perpetuated. Some degree of splitting inevitably occursa splitting
personified in the supervisory couple: power from the lack of power, success from
the lack of success, conformity from the lack of conformity, knowledge from
ignorance. True, this is intrinsic to any system, and a training institution is a
system. But in the vignette of Simon and Geena, Simon is faced with several
choices.
He has already tried to address the supervisory relationship in a variety of ways.
Now does he honor his own analytic work, which may mean leaving Geena as a
supervisor to begin the case again at huge personal and professional cost to
himself? Such a move will not only be financially expensive, it will delay graduation
and perhaps even jeopardize graduation, depending on other conditions of his life
such as health and family and the potential of disasters. Does he continue with
Geena, and also continue trying to express what he perceives to her? Its a tricky
thing, even an inflated thing, to assume collegiality while still being evaluated. But
there must be some assumption of equality or there would be no analytical
authority to claim. What is more, that equality might be in the mind of the
supervisor or the supervisee, but not both at the same time.
Simon might push down his growing resentment and the fact that he is getting so
little at that point out of supervision, continuing with Geena as if all is well. This
too has potential effects on his training. In some way he would betray himself. If
he graduates, he might find that what he has matters little to him because of the
way that he gained it. He could discuss the whole situation with his case
committee, which is a risk dependent on complexes and theoretical stands of the
committee. This again could potentially honor his individuation, but potentially
sabotage his graduation.
In the midst of this is confusion about theory, an entity as vibrant in the
supervisory consulting room as the persons of supervisor and supervise. So often
theory is considered to be something static, a kind of technique, at times almost a
gospel that one must have faith in, not a body of thinking to be challenged and
questioned. What is more, the supervisee often wants theory to be this static
unquestioned body of thinking. Training is a time of gathering up conceptual
building blocks so that one can establish oneself and speak of what one knows with
some assurance. The supervisor may also want theory to be static and easily

articulated as this provides a sense of authority, a ground of knowledge that can

be more easily communicated.
Simons relationship to theory is part of why he chose Geena Verso to begin with.
He wanted to learn more about object relations. Geenas relationship with theory
caused her to facilitate transmission of various ideas through the books she
recommendedrecommendations that implied the firm theoretical understanding
Simon projected on her, and believed he wanted. However, Simons particular
idealization of object relations implicitly included his own perceived need for
Geenas parental insight. After his disillusioning experience with her in supervision,
he also began to doubt much of object relations. The person of Geena and the
theory of object relations merged.
Simons disillusionment may be a necessary experience of clinical maturity as we
discard and picks up pieces of theory, often making choices about ideas due to the
persons they are connected to. However, when a supervisee is in the midst of
writing up cases for evaluation, such doubts and discarding of theory can be
problematic, even dangerous to give voice to. Candidates are evaluated on work as
an analyst, not rebellious doubts that might potentially undermine analysis. If
Simon writes up Belles case, he may choose to leave out his questions rather than
risk exposing what has become a vulnerable theoretical area in himself.
What becomes apparent is that for the supervisee, there are multiple loyalties and
conflicts in supervision. There is commitment to ones personal individuation
process, commitment to the power structure of training, commitment to a
relationship with a supervisor, to an exploration of theory, to ones patients. These
various ruling forces bring with them their own growth and opportunity. They bring
with them their own pockets of darkness.
Let me offer another short vignette, again with Simon, our imagined supervisee,
but now with another supervisor, Randolph Heyden, another case, and another set
of conflicts and missings. Randolph Heyden is 20-odd years older than Simon with
a classical approach colored by an intuitive rather charismatic flair. In this
supervision, Simon focuses primarily on Lee, a female patient whose huge
resistance to the unconscious has left her sleepwalking through her life. Lees
parents are both refugees from a country embroiled in war and refuse to speak of
their past. The major problem with Lee is that Simon has difficulty staying awake

in session. This is not a reverie with images that might give clues to the process,
but a type of blankness. Simon knows this is in part his identification with Lees
unconscious state. Then, as he presents his patient, he notices Randolph falling
asleep and asks about it. Randolph says his sleepiness is a reaction to Lees
process, something that prompted the presentation of Lee in the first place.
Randolph discusses sleep as an archetype, a necessary unconsciousness in life. He
underlines how there must be room for the mystery of what happens in analysis
without our ability to name it. Simon still has no clue of how to deal with Lee in
session, or even if he can avoid falling asleep. He has already reflected to her that
she is blocked, and this block is reflected in the analysis.
Randolph tells Simon the case will take a long time, a lot of boring hours with Lee.
He amplifies with several fairy tales, including Sleeping Beauty and the more
recent Rip Van Wrinkle. But Simon already knows it will take a long time. He has
already imagined both he and his patient into the story of Rip van Wrinkle, which
in itself is a problem. Every hour seems like a week. But now Randolph Heyden
appears bored whenever Lee is brought up. Simon considers dropping any case
write-up of Lee, and talking with Randolph about another case where the patient is
more obviously seductive and emotionally invested in the work.
Randolph forgets the next session with Simon. That is, he has scheduled an
attractive woman Simon trains with at the time that was to be Simons session.
Simon knocks on the consulting room door, believing it to be his time. Randolph
checks his calendar. No, Simon was not written down, in spite of this being the day
he usually came. Would Simon please come back at a later hour and they would
discuss this.
Simon uses the intervening hours to reflect, wondering if it was some anxiety on
his part to perhaps arrive at the wrong time. But he had the appointment written
downRandolph did not. However Simon doesnt want to push it too far because
as we have already establishedhe is a nice guy and knows how to conform to
the systemnot to mention his parental issues that cause him to desire care in
particular ways. Parental issuesI might addthat appear woven into the nature
of training with its questions of what to push and how far and what is too far.
Simon decides not to push the forgotten hour. Rather than continue inducing
sleepiness in Randolph, Simon shifts his major focus to the more emotionally

available patient. After this, Randolph does not forget another hour. Leethe
patient who induces sleepis more or less put to sleep.
While Simon clearly enacts parental dynamics in supervision, the supervisors he
chooses operate in a way that does not involve examining the supervision
relationship. This is one of the implicit difficulties of the process. The supervisory
relationship does not have the clear container of the analytic relationship, yet it
does have plenty of transferences and counter-transferences as the relationship is
forged with the very material of our clinical workour selves. In addition, we are
the future colleagues of one another. What we say in supervision will not only be
interpreted, but perhaps also repeated to others that are future colleagues. Our
self-image is at stake in supervision in a way that it is protected in analysis.
Randolph Heyden, this second supervisor, is well-versed in the mystery of analysis,
the fact that what is said is often not as important as the relationship in which it is
said, that an accurate interpretation is one that the relationship can hold. However,
Randolph does not apply this to supervision. And for reasons of his own
psychology, Simon goes along with this omission without a murmur.
There seem to be stages to supervision, some of which we may take longer in than
others, some of which we circle back to again and again. We all begin with some
idea of what it is to be a Jungian analyst, an image colored by popular views of the
profession; analyst as X ray vision, dream catcher, agitator, healer, even wizard or
shaman. Our ideas of being a Jungian analyst shape our view of committees,
supervisors and analysts. In addition, early on most of us are far from secure in
our analytic identity. Our insecurity tugs us towards attachment styles that we feel
comfortable with. It provides us with our defenses of choice. We may choose a
supervisor to feed our own grandiosity and theirs, to take care of, to fight with.
Some of us travel many miles to the supervisor of our choice because he or she is
the one who will get us through, we are sure of it. No one else will work. We
discuss others experiences of supervisors and imagine ourselves into them
He doesnt let me get away with anything, someone will say.
I need nurturing, we respond. I couldnt take it.
If I cant argue, I wont learn, another adds.

And yet another says, I cant take anyone too intellectual. That bores me.
Hopefully our unconscious motivators begin to rise up and tarnish with exposure in
the process of supervision. We may go into a type of rebellion, or seek to establish
our ideals by a mimicry that entrenches narcissistic issues even further. We do
what we believe the supervisor would do, in a way we believe they would be
pleased with. This affects not only relationships with supervisors and ourselves,
but perhaps most importantly it affects our patients. Many may have had the
experience I once had after a supervision session when I returned to my office and
implemented some of what I had learned. In the next session with that patient,
she brought a dream in which I had invited another analyst to my office for her
session, and I hid behind that analysts chair.
It is easy to think of supervision and the training institution as a kind of power
pressing in on the supervisee, a power to which we are subordinate, power that
regulates. This is part of it. But that power is also part of what forms us, a
condition of our existence. In other words, in supervision what is at first part of the
power structure becomes part of the supervisee, part of the ground on which we
stand, part of how we define ourselves. This is more than internalizing what has
pressed in on us. It becomes an identity.
Such self-formation is the subject of the analytical process. When a patient walks
into our consulting rooms, we hold an implicit awareness of ways they are formed
and shaped by families, cultures, friends, religions, traumas, governments and
personal make-up. We also hold implicit that some of the ways they are shaped
may change, that self-identity is not a static construct. While it is also implicit that
the power structure of supervision will shape the supervisee, it is less clear how
that power structure becomes woven into the supervisee as part of him or her.
The inevitability of our formation by power and the subtleties of change within that
inevitability is the subject of both Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. Foucault
argues that we are always in the process of being formed and shaped by power
structures and discourses. He explores how the discourse of psychology has come
into being with its normalizing force, beginning with the rounding-up and
institutionalization of people who were not working. Lounging on the streets
violated the work ethic, so the unemployed had to be made invisible. Foucault sees
no possibility of existing outside power and discourse. With or without awareness

of what we are in, we are formed by it. Thus any variation or change must take
place within power structures. This makes us always vulnerable to repetition, to a
renormalization of what has gone before. It also provides the possibility of
subversion and change because our formation by power is ongoing, not static or
finished. Or a more psychological way of saying this is, our self-identity is never
complete.
We are never fully baked as analysts but always in the process of baking. Thus we
have the chance to examine, to question, to change. It becomes a point of hope
that being an analyst is not a final destination. Post-supervision we still have our
questions, our learnings. We are still in process. As analysts we are colleagues, but
for whatever reason we attached to our supervisors in training, we may also still
be attached. And our supervisors may also be attached to the role they had,
continuing that role in different forms in the analytic community. While there is no
established container to process such issues, we may create our own container,
initiating a conversation with a supervisor that partially resolves things. Leftover
dynamics of supervision simmer below the work of the analytical community, the
loves and hates, the abandonments, the resentments. While such churnings can be
a source of distress, Foucaults perspective on the simmering of post supervision
conflicts provides an odd hope. Were not done. This may keep us from existing
simply to renormalize that which has come before.
Judith Butler has a different angle on the workings of power. While she agrees with
Foucault that formation by discourses and power structures is inevitable, she does
not see us all encompassed by this. For her, the possibility of change is where the
normalizing effects of discourse and power fail or miss their mark, the subversive
potential of unstable identities and misrecognition. In other words, some aspect of
who we are is always in excess of what forms us.
Such an idea fits well with the workings of analytical psychology. We are more than
the sum of our parts, more than what forms us. Whatever name we put to our
excesscollective unconscious, melancholia, misfitit offers a hope. We struggle
to conform and normalize to power structures, and the more fully we succeed, the
more we lose something of ourselves. The grief of cutting off what does not fit is
huge, and the grief of keeping what does not fit often brings misunderstanding.
Butler sees issues of grief visited on our bodies in ways we move, talk, and dress.

For her this pervasive melancholia becomes evidence of ways we have not fully
normalized, evidence of an excess in us that does not fit.
The process of supervision is a contradictory endeavor. In it we are not free,
subject not only to the work we do, but to the training organization of which we
are a part, the culture, the norms, the ways psychology itself has emerged out of
normalizing influences. A supervisee needs to learn how to do something as his or
herself, but supervision has the odd task of feeling this out, as if it knows what
that is. As early as 1928 Jung warned us that, one is oneself the biggest of all
ones assumptions, and the one with the gravest consequences (italics Jungs). He
then goes on to say, the assumption that I myself am will determine my method:
as I am, so will I proceed. (The Practice of Psychotherapy, para 543). In other
words, the practitioner is the method, but there are certain things that method
needs to accomplish. Thus supervision needs to be about technique and about
being spontaneously true to ones own nature. Then it is about examining what we
are spontaneously true to as it just might be a pit of unconsciousness we are
swimming in with delight. Such unconsciousness can be the excess heralding hope
and change. It can also simply perpetuate things as they are.
It behooves us to be aware of how we renormalize what has come before. Judith
Butler reminds us: To be dominated by a power external to oneself is a familiar
and agonizing form power takes. To find, however, that what one is, ones very
formation as a subject, is in some sense dependent upon the very power is quite
another (The Psychic Life of Power, 1-2). While it can be glaringly obvious that
our formation as an analyst depends on the power structure as it exists, we can
live in excess of this. We can subvert it from withintwo very Jungian ideas that
dont always fit too well with supervision.
Works Cited
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. Routledge: New York. 1999.
. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford University Press:
Stanford CA. 1997.
Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of
Reason.
Random House: New York. 1965.

Jung, C.G. The Realities of Practical Psychotherapy, (1937) In CW 16: The

Practice of
Psychotherapy, 1966 edition

En otras palabras, algn aspecto de lo que somos est siempre en

exceso de lo que nos forma.
Tal idea encaja bien con el funcionamiento de la psicologa analtica.
Somos ms que la suma de nuestras partes, ms que lo que nos forma.
No importa el nombre que ponemos en nuestro exceso-inconsciente
colectivo, la melancola, inadaptado-que ofrece una esperanza.
Luchamos para conformar y normalizar las estructuras de poder, y de la
manera ms completa tenemos xito, ms perdemos algo de nosotros
mismos. La pena de cortar lo que no encaja es enorme, y el dolor de
mantener lo que no encaja trae a menudo mal entendido. Mayordomo ve
problemas de dolor visitado en nuestros cuerpos en formas que
moverse, hablar, y el vestido. Para ella esto se convierte en la
melancola generalizada evidencia de maneras no hemos normalizado
completamente, la evidencia de un exceso en nosotros que no encaja.
El proceso de supervisin es una tarea contradictoria. En l no somos
libres, sujetos no slo para el trabajo que hacemos, sino a la
organizacin de formacin de la que somos parte, la cultura, las normas,
la psicologa maneras misma ha surgido de las influencias de la
normalizacin. Una persona supervisada necesita aprender cmo hacer
algo que l o ella misma, pero la supervisin tiene la tarea extraa de
sentir esto hacia fuera, como si se sabe lo que es eso. Ya en 1928 Jung
nos advirti que, "uno es uno mismo el ms grande de todos los
supuestos de uno, y el que tiene las consecuencias ms graves"
(cursivas de Jung). A continuacin, va a decir, "la suposicin de que yo
mismo soy determinar mi mtodo: que a m, as yo proceder." (La
prctica de la psicoterapia, prrafo 543). En otras palabras, el
practicante es el mtodo, pero hay ciertas cosas que necesita para llevar
a cabo el mtodo. Por lo tanto la supervisin tiene que ser acerca de la
tcnica y de estar forma espontnea fiel a la propia naturaleza de uno. A
continuacin, se trata de examinar lo que estamos espontneamente fiel
a lo que slo podra ser un pozo de inconsciencia estamos nadando en
alegra. Tal prdida del conocimiento puede ser el exceso de esperanza
que anuncia y el cambio. Tambin puede simplemente perpetuar las
cosas como son.
Nos conviene ser conscientes de cmo nos renormalizar lo que ha
llegado antes. Judith Butler nos recuerda: "Para ser dominado por un
poder externo a uno mismo es una fuente de forma familiar y agonizante
lleva. Para encontrar, sin embargo, que lo "uno" es, uno de formacin
misma como sujeto, en cierto sentido es muy dependiente de la energa

es otra muy distinta "(la vida psquica de alimentacin, 1-2)." Si bien

puede ser notoriamente obvio que nuestra formacin como analista
depende de la estructura de poder, tal como existe, podemos vivir por
encima de esto. Podemos socavan desde dentro de dos ideas muy
jungianos que no siempre encajan muy bien con la supervisin.
Trabajos citados
Butler, Judith. El gnero en disputa. Routledge: New York. 1999.