ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a specific focus on the discourse of clinical supervision. It provides some conventional metaphors of clinical supervision, with particular attention to the literature on definitions, guides and frameworks. The chapter explores new metaphors for clinical supervision, drawing on naturalistic research conducted over the past decade. Orientational metaphors, in which concepts are spatially related to each other, are evident in key terms such as under supervision, oversee and even observe. The ontological metaphor of ‘balancing’ patient safety and trainee learning—picture a set of weighing scales—helps to acknowledge that these two values are in relationship and that their relationship is often one of tension. The metaphor’s theoretical roots in organisational science direct our attention to supervision as a complex system, and provide a vocabulary for exploring the nature and degree of interdependence of system components. Conventional metaphors of clinical supervision reproduce a particular conceptualisation of clinical supervision as binary, realist, linear and neutral.
