Mutual Anxiety in Supervision

Abstract

As supervisors, we are sensitive to the supervisee’s shame and dependency, but we may be unaware of our own vulnerability. Both participants may collude to locate all the anxiety in the supervisee, ignoring the fact that the supervisor is also dependent upon the supervisee for referrals, feelings of self-worth, and one’s reputation in the institute and profession. This can create a dynamic in which the supervisor’s insecurities are projected into the supervisee, increasing feelings of shame and powerlessness that then get reenacted with the patient. I propose a model of supervision in which vulnerability is mutually experienced and even welcomed as an opportunity to deepen the work and model for the therapist ways to embrace anxiety and uncertainty.

Keywords:

• anxiety
• collusion
• countertransference
• evaluation process
• enactment
• intersubjective
• parallel process
• relational
• shame
• supervision
• training analyst

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Steven Kuchuck, Nina Williams, Joyce Selter, and Veronica Bearison for their valuable input.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eric Sherman

Eric Sherman, LCSW, is the Chair of the Supervisory Training Program at the Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New Jersey, where he was the former Associate Director of Training. He is also a Faculty Member and Supervisor at The National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York. He is the author of Notes from the Margins: The Gay Analyst’s Subjectivity in the Treatment Setting (Routledge), and he is a contributor to When the Personal Becomes Professional: Clinical Implications of the Analyst’s Life Experiences (Routledge). He is a member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy and is in private practice in New York City and Montclair, New Jersey.