WORKSHOP: Workshop on a personal construct model of supervision
Franz R. Epting *, Linda L. Viney * *
*Dept. of Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL (USA), **Dept.
of Psychology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, N. S.W. (Australia)
Abstract
We believe that the supervision of counseling from a personal construct
model must have two main aims. The first is to help the therapist to reconstruct,
that is, to reinterpret clients, their problems and the counseling relationship,
using the concepts of the conceptual model that is being applied. The second,
and even more important aim, is for the therapist to learn to deal with
her own contributions to the counseling, those which can be verbalized
and those which have not yet been verbalized. Indeed, the deepest threats
and fears of the therapists may need to be brought into focus. The psychological
functioning of therapists and clients are seen as highly similar. It is
on this assumption of reflexivity that our definition of supervision is
based. During supervision, therapists learn to attend to their personal
contributions to coun-seling, especially by acknowledging, identifying,
and exploring their emotional reactions to their own experiences of psychotherapy.
The supervisory relationship provides the therapist with a safe place to
experiment with her own meanings and so extend and refine them. This place
of safety is exactly analogous to the place of safety provided by personal
construct ther-apy sessions for clients to experiment with their own meanings.
In this workshop, we explore some of the implications of this personal
construct perspective on the supervision of thera-pists, and guide workshop
participants through the phases of this model using structured expe-riential
exercises.
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