ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a set of definitive precepts that can be used to help a supervisor to navigate the treacherous seas of supervision — the conscious system stands ever-ready to sabotage the potentially fine process. In contrast, supervisors who use the standard communicative model of supervision find that the second unconscious system is far more definitive than its conscious counterpart. A supervisor may have a vested interest in a particular theory of therapy or treatment modality, one that creates blind spots, inflexibility, and needs to pressure the supervisee to work in a particular manner. A supervisor should be on the alert for sources of deviant motives, and he or she should secure the frame of a given supervisory situation by reducing contaminations to an absolute minimum. Translated Into practical terms, the need to teach not infrequently means that, at times, a supervisor will be obliged to decode a supervised patient's material for some very painful unconscious perceptions of the supervisee.
