ABSTRACT
The significance of consistent framework management by the profession has tended to remain at the level of tacit agreement. However, Dr. Robert Langs has pioneered a technique that explicitly spells out the ramifications for the patient when the ground rules are disturbed. Langs's empirical research of the therapeutic process has also shown that patients are acutely sensitive to everything that the therapist says and does and that their perceptions of the encounter are likely to be intimated in a form that is disguised and encoded. The communicative supervisor is therefore required to be alert for ambiguities in the supervisory interaction which would then sanction alterations in the supervisee's relationship with her patient. The existential fears that are generated within the secure frame are also considered to influence the supervisory environment and stimulate the need for both the supervisor and supervisee to favour a less structured setting.
