MY APPROACH TO SUPERVISION:

​

During my journey through academia and clinical training, I had some wonderful and inspiring supervisors. I aspire to honor this lineage and channel the gifts that I received from them into the supervision I provide. I especially try to keep in mind the aspects of their expertise that facilitated the most growth and openness in me.  

​

From Dr. Joe Newirth, I learned that supervision is not that different from therapy in the sense that the supervisee, for me the supervisor, is at the center of the time spent together. The goal is not to gaze together at the patient as a knowable object, which we discuss from a removed point of view. Rather, the focus is on the development of the supervisee, their vision, their style, and my participation in this growth and learning. To this end, theory is only useful when it helps us be open, explore, and expand. 

 

This approach echoes with another central figure in my path of becoming a therapist, Dr. Kirkland Vaughans. Dr. Vaughans, who would have us, as I now do, start with the emotion, the difficulty, the stuckness, the issue (in schizoanalytic terms, the concept) that is at hand. Primary is the question of what is active, and generic demographic data is later added if needed. In this way, we can be mindful of how and why the positionality (of the patients, therapists, supervisors) is functioning and interacting in these lives.  

 

Similarly, Dr. Kate Szymanski emphasized to me that the therapist is participating in the struggle around the issue brought up by the patient, and so am I as supervisor. This opens up the treatment to the world and to trying to come to novel terms with the pains that articulate themselves in our private lives. 

 

This requires, as I have always felt from my mentor and supervisor, Dr. Karen Lombardi, genuine empathy and trust. It requires a real effort to come to understand the patient's world and, with that, an effort to understand the world in which the patient, therapist, and supervisor all live on one plane. 

 

And finally, as Dr. Michael O'Loughlin helped me experience, this enabled surprises (in schizoanalytic terms: lines of flight) in the work together. This approach facilitates moments of genuine existential connection, focusing on intrinsic experiences of shared novelty and difference rather than recognition or narration. 

 

To this, as can be gleamed through the parentheses, I add a great lineage of critical thinkers (Deleuze, Baudrillard, Butler, Barad, Haraway, and others) that help me open the supervision to the world. This amalgamation helps us travel smoothly between patients, supervisees, supervisors, and the world, without hierarchy.