Supervisees’ Internal Analytic Community

Abstract

Therapists’ internalized analytic communities, like other internal or imagined communities, consist of attachment figures’ representations, with which they share the same ideals and beliefs, interests, and boundaries. These internal analytic communities, emerging as a “third presence” in therapeutic interactions, facilitate the development of therapeutic processes, enhance therapists’ sense of safety and their identification with other professionals, and share their therapeutic responsibility. This notwithstanding, therapists sometimes experience anxiety associated with contradictions between their internal analytic community and individualistic parts of their professional selves. Besides familiarizing the supervisees with updated theoretical convictions and practices, the supervisor’s role includes helping them to assimilate their own version of the analytic community through negotiating their inner contradictions. Several positions are suggested to facilitate supervisors’ capacity to help their supervisees to construct and assimilate an integrated internal analytic community that is capable of validating the supervisees’ professionality and strengthening their authority and self-experience as analytic therapists.

Keywords:

• analytic community
• internalization
• assimilation
• imagined community