Introduction

Courses in the principles of supervision abound, and the critical role of supervision in the development of a psychotherapist is widely acknowledged. Communicative studies have shown that both conscious and unconscious communication and processing are continuous activities of the adaptive mind. Psychotherapy supervision requires a sound framework and structure: it cannot be left to vague principles or chance. Conscious thinking is a treacherous basis for developing principles of supervisory practice, and thus the supervisory couple must utilize encoded or unconscious confirmation to establish the validity of all supervisory interventions and the theory on which they are based. The ultimate supervisor in supervision is the therapy patient, who can be relied on to carry out, albeit entirely without awareness, a variety of effective teaching and healing activities through encoded narratives and directives — the patient's unconscious mind is the ideal supervisor for a psychotherapist and his or her supervisor.