ABSTRACT
My premise in this paper is that supervision occurs in two separate modes, which, in turn, conform to two distinct laws or regulatory principles. In order of what we find most familiar and acceptable, the first mode is that of interpretation and secondary process. We listen to what our supervisees tell us, look to see what the material means, and interpret it to them, with or without recommendations as to how they should follow through clinically. The second mode underscores the fact that supervisor and supervisee, therapist and patient, and the patient and the people in the patient's life are continually acting upon one another through words, gestures, and deeds. The model here is that of primary experience: a continual movement of psychic process and/or energy that acts as cause “seeking” an effect. In this mode, what is said becomes a context of action and interaction rather than of meaning.
