ABSTRACT
In writing about supervision with trainee analysts, Frijling-Schreuder writes about the importance of establishing a “working alliance” with the supervisee. The issue of dependence in supervision is controversial and influences the supervisor’s technique. H. F. Searles believes that during certain phases of analytic treatment, the trainee-analyst’s dependence on the supervisor may be “unprecedentedly great”, and he likens it to the dependence of the nursing mother. S. Lebovici believes that the trainee therapist will inevitably develop transference reactions to the supervisor. V. Sedlak seeks to show that psychotherapeutic work will break down at the point when the therapist is unable to deal with the countertransference, and particularly the negative countertransference. Although Mrs Jones had not failed to interpret her patient’s transference experience of her previously, in supervision session when she interpreted it her patient had been moved to tears and had gone on to describe her experience of loss, both of her mother and of her own identity.
