ABSTRACT
The influence of trauma theory on the supervision literature is also useful in considering how neuroscience findings are filtering their way into the supervisory relationship. Frawley-O’Dea (1997) made some interesting observations in her article “Who’s Doing What to Whom? Supervision and Sexual Abuse.” She noted that supervision addressing clients with traumatic histories can become troubling encounters when the supervisory dyad enacts parts of the dyadic constellations of trauma identity in a “kaleidoscopically shifting pattern” (p. 12). She emphasized that a main defense of traumatized clients may be dissociation. These dissociative processes can leak into the supervisory process and leave the supervisory dyad somewhat in a “fog.” In these instances, it is instructive for the supervisory dyad to understand the dissociative defense is being used to guard the supervisory dyad from the potentially overwhelming feelings that would be stimulated while integrating the horror of the abuse that the client may have experienced. A later example illustrates a supervisory exchange that typifies this process.
