ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how analysts come to recognize and misrecognize their appropriate roles as supervisors. H. F. Searles took account of the supervisor’s personality and the emotional impact on both supervisor and supervisee, moving theory into an intersubjective context that would include the supervisor’s countertransference and resistances. There have probably been more words written on the subject of transference and countertransference from a wide variety of different perspectives than on any other subject within the domain of depth psychology. Theoretically, it is only since the late 1950s and 1960s that any real interest has been taken in transference processes in supervision. The supervisor works in an National Health Service setting supervising a group of honorary psychotherapists. Supervisors and supervisees working in an organization attend to the unconscious dynamics between patient and therapist and between themselves, but also have to process an additional set of transferences to the organization.
