ABSTRACT
It seems to me that there is a limited amount of theory that has been constructed specifically to explain the processes of supervision. The field is far from atheoretical, however, because much psychological theory developed in other contexts is applicable. Some of this has been explored in Chapter 2, in which the tenets of knowledge acquisition and learning were applied to the process of supervision. Since supervision occurs in the context of interpersonal relationships, theories that attempt to explain relationships are also of relevance, and it is in this arena that the tasks of supervision and therapy might be perceived to have common elements and be informed by similar ideas. The notion of the supervisory alliance, for example, derives from that of the therapeutic alliance. Psychodynamic theory can be utilised in attempting to explain what happens between the client, therapist and supervisor through the notion of ‘parallel process’ (Doehrman, 1976) wherein ideas about transference and counter-transference are applied to the triadic relationship.
