Supervision, is a collaborative opportunity for practitioners to examine their work and explore the meaning of their reactions to clients' material.

It is primarily aimed at psychotherapists and councillors, but also offered to anyone in a profession which involves an emotional encounter with their clients.

I am happy to work in supervision with people of all theoretical orientations.

I feel that because supervision is a collaborative, exploratory and supportive enterprise  differences in approach can only generate a constructive tension and therefore lead to an enhanced synthesis of ideas and better understanding.

Nevertheless, I feel that you have every right to examine my approach, and I lay out my practical and theoretical stance in some detail below.

Terms

• We will agree a regular rotation at least one month in advance.

• We will endeavour to meet at the same time and on the same day. 

• I will present an invoice during the last session in any month and expect payment by cheque in the session or by return.

Practical and theoretical stance

My personal stance is passionately integrative.  I believe that all therapists working with integrity are essentially doing the same thing (Kahn 1991, Hubble et al 1999), and I am very excited to see recent advances at the cutting edge of psychotherapy, neuroscience, developmental biology and psychiatry support this view.  (Schore 1994, 2003a, 2003b, Fonagy 2001, 2004, Stern 1985, 1998, 2004, Siegel 1999,  Gopnik  1999, Pinker 1997, Damasio 1994, 1999, 2003, Carter 2001)

No matter how useful theoretical concepts are, what I really aspire to is to be a "being with" therapist.  Psychotherapy is often described as "the talking cure", but I think - and feel - that the word, though crucial, is actually by far the lesser part of therapeutic exchange and change (Stern et al 1998).  It is as though psychotherapy parallels the way we are loved into our bodies (or not) by our mother (primary care giver) through her physical holding and sensitivity to our moods and rhythms, and are gently eased out into world by her small day-to-day failures. I think that at the core of therapeutic growth and change are psychological holding, mirroring and attunement in all communication channels and, when we are able to see and make use of them, our failures to achieve these.

Words are, of course, clearly invaluable in the triangulation of the client's contemporary experience in the world (their presenting issue, their "trouble") with their developmental experience, under the illumination of their immediate experience of being with another - and of being been with - in the session.  The immediate and historical experience often still defy articulation and remain ineffable, but the implicit learning that affects generated in the session can be tolerated or regulated (Stern 1985, 2004, Schore 2003b, Fonagy 2004) through the therapist's holding and, in time, auto-regulated by the client is what gets translated back out into the world as repair. This process also, critically, helps clients use extra therapeutic relationships constructively for regulation and repair. (Hubble 1999)

Since my first training I focused, in my continuing professional development, on better understanding of psychoanalytic concepts. I used the term "psychoanalytic" very broadly.  My own emphasis is on attachment in terms of its explanatory power with early material and on object relations, especially Kleinian thought (Klein 1946), in terms of evaluating and using counter transference feelings. Authors I turn to frequently are Holmes (1993, 1994), Winnicott (1971, 1988), Ogden (1989) and Bollas (1987).

My first psychotherapy training was existential-phenomenological (Yalom 1980, Laing 1960, 1967, Thompson 1995, Freud 1958) with a strong side current in post-Jungian process oriented psychology.  (Jung 1959, Bettleheim 1975, Mindell 1981, 1984, Goodbread 1987) Though I had no formal training in the field, I was also introduced to neurolinguistic thought at this stage and I have continued to find inquiry based on ambiguity, deletions and incompleteness in sentence structure very valuable.  (Bandler and Grinder 1975, 1979)

My first profession was as a scientist and engineer and in these two roles are embodied my biggest strength and weakness: curiosity.  In the scientist role, curiosity encourages engagement and patient observation of the client and my own process. It is the cornerstone of my best work, focusing on the affective phenomenology of therapeutic interaction.  If I slip into being an engineer I can be drawn along to hypothesise and test too soon in my desire to do something useful.

References    
Bandler and Grinder 1975 The structure of magic        Palo Alto Science and Behaviour books
Bandler and Grinder 1979 Frogs into princes        Moab         Real people
Bettleheim, B         1975 The uses of enchantment        New York         Random
Bollas, C         1987 The Shadow of the Object       London         Free Association Books
Carter, R 2001 Mapping the mind London Phoenix
Damasio, A  1994 Descartes Error: Emotion, reason and the human brain New York Putnam
Damasio, A 1999 The Feeling of What Happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness New York Harcourt Brace
Damasio, A 2003 Looking for Spinoza – Joy, Sorrow and the Human Brain London Random House
Fonagy, P 2001 Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis New York Other Press
Fonagy, P et al    2004 Affect Regulation, Mentalisation and the Developing Self London Karnac
Freud, S 1958 Recommendations to physicians practicing psychoanalysis. SE Vol 12 London Hogarth
Goodbread, JH 1987 The dreambody toolkit New York Routledge
Gopnik, A  et al 1999 How Babies Think (The Scientist in the Crib) London Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Holmes, J 1994 Bowlby: a reappraisal. The clinical implications of attachment theory
B. J. of Psychotherapy, Vol. 11(1) 1994 London 
Holms, J 1993 John Bowlby and Attachment Theory London Routledge
Hubble et al 1999 The Heart and Soul of Change Washington American Psych. As
Jung, C G 1959 Aion.  The collected works of C. G. Jung.  Volume 9, Part II London Routledge
Kahn, M 1991 Between therapist and client: the new relationship New York Freeman
Klein, M 1946 Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. Envy and Gratitude and other works: 1946 - 1963 London Free Press
Laing, R D 1960 The divided self New York Pantheon
Laing, R D 1967 The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise  Pantheon
Mindell, A 1981 Dreambody London Routledge
Mindell, A 1984 Working with the dreaming body London Routledge
Ogden, T H 1989 The Primitive Edge of Experience London Karnac
Pinker, S 1997 How the Mind Works New York Norton
Schore, A N 1994 Affect regulation and origin of the self Mahwah, NJ Erlbaum
Schore, A N 2003a Affect dysregulation and disorders of the self New York Norton
Schore, A N 2003b Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self New York Norton
Siegel, D J  1999 The Developing Mind: Toward a neurobiology of interpersonal experience New York Guilford Press
Stern, D 1985 The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology London Karnac
Stern, D 2004 The present moment in psychotherapy and everyday life New York Norton
Stern, D et al 1998 Non–interpretive mechanisms in psychoanalytic therapy: the something more than interpretation. Int. J. Psychoanal. 79:903-21
Thompson G M 1995 The truth about Freud’s technique New York NYUP
Winnicott, D 1971 Playing and reality New York Basic Books
Winnicott, D 1988 Babies and Their Mothers London Free Association Books
Yalom, ID 1980 Existential psychotherapy New York Basic Books