Introduction

Supervisors and therapists can feel like detectives trying to solve impenetrable mysteries. Unlike this duo, a supervisor rarely has a `cold, precise but admirably balanced mind' like Holmes, nor are our supervisees all warmhearted Boy's Own Paper heroes, like Dr Watson. Conan Doyle based Holmes on a teacher at his medical school, Dr Joseph Bell, an Edinburgh surgeon, to whom is attributed another of Holmes' famous phrases, `it is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data' (Conan Doyle 1985: 12). An aim of this book is to help us notice when we theorise without data and forget to pay as much attention to what does not happen in a session, as to what does. Supervisors use metaphors to hold and contain mysteries, until they can be solved, if they can be.