ABSTRACT
When Virginia Woolf was asked to talk about fiction she entitled her lecture A Room of One’s Own (1928). I unashamedly steal this title, adapting it to apply to the space we call supervision. Supervision implies a looking over, a sense of a wider vision. A room is connected with other rooms, part of a house, therefore part of a greater whole. The room of supervision likewise has interconnecting doors and adjacent rooms. It is like the study where the therapist can retreat to read and think and write, a room to reflect in and learn from. It is also like the playroom where she can be in Winnicott’s ‘potential space’ and engage in a creative encounter with another, teasing out an understanding of the work with clients which lies below consciousness. It can be a laundry-room where washing out the ‘stuff’ (literally material) of the interaction between client and therapist can be done, ironing out the client’s projections, the therapist’s counter-transference, sorting and gaining a sense of order in the chaos of the work.
