ABSTRACT
Valerie had two main interests: the meaning of Barry's non-verbal communications, which included rocking, pulling his fingers back, dancing, dribbling, farting, and staring longingly at the therapist; and the capacity of the therapist's countertransference to decode all of these communications. An important component of Valerie's supervision of Respond as it developed was her insistence that disability psychotherapy should not be ghettoised as an adaptation of psychotherapy, nor as a form of "applied" treatment. It was, she continually reminded us, psychotherapy – a relational, intersubjective process that involves a careful interweaving of the psychodynamic and the creative. The majority of psychotherapy trainings continue to contravene legislation enshrined in the Equality Act by failing to equip their trainees to work with people with intellectual disabilities. Valerie's role as a supervisor and trainer, albeit not formally identified as such, is invaluable.
