“Where does it come from?”: A call for explicating implicit theories of interpretive and supervisory techniques in psychoanalytic supervision*

Abstract

The knowledge culture of psychoanalysis relies heavily on the practical wisdom of competent psychoanalytic clinicians. In order to become competent analysts, analysts in training should not content themselves with trusting in their supervisors’ intuition and expertise. There is a need for supervisors and supervisees to explicate implicit theories of interpretive and supervisory techniques in psychoanalytic supervision by raising the question “Where does it come from?” with regard to three too often neglected issues. First, both the supervisor and the analyst in training should actively and constantly try to make transparent the process of contextualization, that is, the methodology of inferring latent meaning from manifest content through privileging certain pieces of information over others. Second, it should become an ongoing task in supervision that concrete (recommendations about) technical interventions are embedded in and reflect the application of a particular theory of technique. This facilitates an understanding that goes beyond the interpretation in a concrete situation and helps to generalize learning into a gradually expanding, integrated technical framework. Third, we should reflect and explicate the (predominant) supervisory approaches we are using in order to remain flexible with regard to both supervisory material and ways of reacting to it. Discussing these issues will enable analysts in training to develop their own psychoanalytic identity and integrated frame of reference for their practice that they critically and deliberately reflect upon and actively acquire rather than passively and seemingly intuitively absorb and adopt. Examples for illustrating the explication of theories of interpretive and supervisory techniques are provided.

Key words:

• psychoanalytic supervision
• contextualization
• theory of technique
• psychoanalytic competence

Notes

1 In the title of his paper on a framework for the more transparent assessment of psychoanalytic competence, David Tuckett (2005) asks the rhetorical question “Does anything go?”

2 It is, however, likely that a plenitude of theoretical references would be revealed. For example, Bohleber (2006) identified 26 different theoretical elements in a session by Peter Fonagy, which stem from different theoretical traditions and even partly contradict each other.

3 The question of how, when, and why session notes have become the predominant supervisory material, at least in Germany, would require its own manuscript, which would probably have to address the influence of Charlotte Bühler, who established experimental research based on behavioral observations of infants in Vienna in the 1920s and 30s (the “Vienna School”), of Anna Freud, who worked together with Ilse Hellmann, a former colleague of Charlotte Bühler, in the Hampstead War Nurseries, as well as of Anne-Marie Sandler. Although I would assume using audio or video recordings to be a more suitable continuation of the focus of Charlotte Bühler and Anna Freud, the influence of Anne-Marie Sandler would put a stronger emphasis on session notes taken from memory (as opposed to notes taken during the session).

4 All translations of quotations from the book on Anne-Marie Sandler are by the current author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nils F. Töpfer

Dr. phil. Nils F. Töpfer is a psychoanalyst in training at the Psychoanalytisches Institut Berlin e.V. in Berlin, Germany. He has obtained Master’s degrees in social and developmental psychology from the University of Cambridge (UK) and in clinical psychology and psychotherapy from the Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena (Germany), as well as a doctorate degree in psychology from the Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena, where he is currently working as a postdoc and research assistant in the Department of Counseling and Clinical Intervention.