Black women talk about stereotypical transference enactments in cross-cultural supervision

ABSTRACT

Little is known about cross-cultural supervision dynamics between Black, female supervisors who provide clinical supervision of White supervisees. This study examined transference enactments which occurred between Black, female clinical supervisors (N = 57) and White supervisees. The results show that White supervisees’ racist and sexist behaviors towards the Black, female supervisors demonstrated remnants of stereotypical images historically attributed to Black women (i.e., Mammy, Jezebel, and/or Sapphire). Moreover, the findings highlight the need to initiate multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills to enhance clinical skills. The paper concludes with recommendations for cross-cultural supervisory dyads and implications for future research.     

Transference Enactments in Clinical Supervision

Transference enactments play a central role in clinical supervision regardless of whether supervisors or supervisees consciously recognize or acknowledge their presence. Supervisors who do recognize enactments better understand the core issues that interfere with supervisees’ capacity to relate therapeutically to patients. Supervisory process is markedly enhanced when supervisors consciously study manifestations of transference within the supervisory relationship and respond to them correctively. Corrective interventions, whether purposeful or unintentional, expand supervisees’ relational and self-reflective capacities.

Dialogical Research in Supervision: Practical Guidelines from Experienced Supervisors in Family Therapy,Child Protection,and Specialty Mental Health Services

This two‐year qualitative participatory research project examines practical guidelines for supervision. Sixteen experienced supervisors across professional settings of family therapy, child protection, and specialty mental health services in the geographical regions of Northern Norway and Northern Sweden outline four main practical guidelines in supervision based on their supervisory practices: (1) elaborating an agreed‐upon contract; (2) exploring potential formats; (3) exploring contents; (4) acknowledging responsibility for process and dilemmas. Participants summarised how they generated mutual growth in supervisory relationships, while being respectful of the first‐person perspective of supervisees. The study challenges pre‐dominating guidelines about deficit‐ or developmental stage‐oriented supervision. It illustrates reflecting processes and a polyphonic orientation in supervision by welcoming diversity, wondering, and tolerance for the not‐yet‐decided among involved persons in a mutual exploration and calibration of relevant knowledge. It outlines a dialogical research for sharing, exploring, and questioning knowledge as beneficial for whom, told by whom, and evaluated by whom.     

Enactments in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: Shaping Moments of Contact and Change

Emotionally focused couple therapy (EFT) uses enactments to shape responsive attachment‐significant contact and to change couple interaction. In this article, we show how EFT enactments differ from enactments in other therapy approaches, present a theory of EFT enactments, a model for creating EFT enactments, and an extended case example of an EFT enactment. Video Abstract     

The effect of proxy voice intervention on couple softening in the context of enactments

In this study we evaluated the effectiveness of proxy voice (therapist acting as client's "voice") intervention, embedded within couple enactments, on client-perceived softening. The primary research question was whether use of proxy voice would be more likely to bring about softening, or if its use was counterintuitive to enactment conceptualization and would elicit struggle behavior (e.g., withdrawal or negativity). Results indicate that proxy voice has a significant, positive association with softening and is inversely related to withdrawal or negativity. Preliminary findings suggest that proxy voice intervention embedded within a fluid, carefully delineated, and discriminating model of enactments effectively facilitates essential elements of couple interaction (expression of primary affect and articulation of self-concept and attachment threats) while promoting self-reliant couple interaction and increased softening.     

Adapting enactments to couple reactivity: five developmental stages

Interest in change interventions that are common to different models of relationship therapy has spurred investigation of enactments as one such candidate. In change-focused enactments, therapists structure and coach couple/family interaction, as opposed to channeling interaction through the therapist. Still, varying levels of couple/family distress, volatility, and reactivity mean that readiness for enactment intervention varies along a broad continuum and changes over the course of therapy. This suggests the need for differentiated enactments. Currently, however, no model exists for adapting enactments to changing relationship conditions. We propose a five-stage developmental model of clinical operations in couple therapy that adapts the process and structure of enactments to changing levels of relationship distress, interactional volatility, and emotional reactivity. The model increases the possibility for therapists to use enactments successfully over the entire course of couple therapy. Issues to be considered in using the couple enactments model as a template for the development of enactment models for other relationship systems are noted.     

Common pitfalls of beginning therapists utilizing enactments

Empirical data, clinical observation, and theoretical rationales support use of enactments as a fundamental mechanism of change in relationship therapies. Yet beginning therapists may lack an adequate conceptual framework and operational training essential to effectively utilize enactments. Inadequate training may contribute to ineffective execution, and in turn to negative results, which could lead to abandonment of enactments. This study sought to identify proficiencies and nonproficiencies of beginning therapists in conducting enactments. Twenty beginning therapists from three Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE)-accredited programs were briefly trained in an indirect therapy style that incorporates enactments. Twenty-six therapist enactments were coded using a comprehensive observational measure designed to assess proficiencies and nonproficiencies in executing enactment phases, component tasks, and subcomponent operations. Results suggest that beginning therapists struggle with numerous clinical operations conceptually linked to the successful engagement of relationships in marriage and family therapy. In light of these findings, specific recommendations for additional enactment training in COAMFTE-accredited programs are offered.     

Less assessment and more suggestions please: Factors contributing to effective supervision of counsellors at different experience levels

Abstract

Twenty-two supervisors and 60 supervisees working in community counselling services in Melbourne were asked to rate the importance of 46 supervisory behaviours to good supervision, as well as listing behaviours that contribute to and detract from good supervision. In general, supervisors saw good supervision as relating primarily to feedback to the supervisee, while supervisees were interested in learning new skills and gaining assistance with conceptualisation in supervision. The responses confirmed evidence of differing supervisee and supervisor perceptions of supervision seen in previous research of students' supervisory needs in America.

Differences in responses from supervisees in this sample to the American sample suggest some cultural differences and some differing needs attributable to different levels of experience. Responses in the current research support a developmental model of supervision; that supervisees have different needs as they gain experience. Applying a process model to behaviours believed to contribute to and detract from good supervision revealed that the bulk of responsibility for a good supervisory relationship is attributed to supervisors. Neither supervisors nor supervisees indicated a high level of supervisee qualities and skills that contribute to good supervision. This has obvious training implications.     

Mentoring or Monitoring: Formulating a Balance in Systemic Supervision

Contemporary supervision practice has increasingly involved tasks previously associated with line management; this has been uncomfortable and unresolved for both supervisors and supervisees. Context, individual preference and circumstance can drive the relationship more into surveillance or more into support, and each will have important implications for practice. This article argues for a balance between monitoring and mentoring, both are crucial for effective supervision to occur. Supervisors need to know the boundaries of their delegated task, given that supervision can be the intervention of choice for any number of organizational difficulties. However they also need to integrate the leadership and critical appraisal tasks required, commencing supervision relationships with these components being transparent and clear, such that all participants can meet their obligations to practice competently, ethically and in the clients' interests. The systemic model provides an effective framework to conceptualise and intervene in relation to the various stakeholders, relationships, service systems and political context in which arrangements for supervision are negotiated.     

Students' Use of Self: Teaching Implications

Social workers acknowledge that they bring more than their professional skills and knowledge to practice, hence the emphasis in many social work programs on enhancing students' self knowledge. After a general overview of self‐knowledge activities for students, the gap between insight and practice is highlighted. The empirical literature is reviewed to find specific and purposeful self enactments, defined as functional ways in which workers intentionally apply their self to practice. Located within professional boundaries, such self enactments potentially form the basis upon which students might consider how to apply their own personal self.     

Supervisees’ Perceptions of Effective Supervision: A Comparison of Fully Synchronous Cybersupervision to Traditional Methods

Despite a great increase in the popularity of cybersupervision, little research is provided regarding supervisees’ perceptions of its effectiveness. This study examined the differences in Master’s level counseling student supervisees’ perceptions of participating in cybersupervision as compared to traditional face-to-face clinical supervision. Results indicated no significant difference in the perceived effectiveness between the two conditions. Implications and suggestions for future research and practice are provided.     

Decentering intensive mothering: More fully accounting for race and class in motherhood norms

In 1996 Sharon Hays published The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood describing the ideology of intensive mothering calling upon mothers to engage in a time-intensive, expensive, and expert-informed style of mothering. In this article, I describe the historical circumstances giving rise to intensive mothering and how structural and historical realities diverge across race and class. I argue that enactments of motherhood are varied, forming a mosaic of motherhood enactments informed by mothers' social locations, including their positions in racialized and classed hierarchies. Mothers operating from marginalized locations innovate and resist intensive mothering, while also being judged by these norms, despite often lacking the resources to meet them. Privileged, primarily White mothers, have been able to harness their resources to achieve intensive mothering and redefine what constitutes good mothering to match the style of mothering they practice. Among some privileged, predominantly White mothers, I contend an even more intense version of intensive mothering is being practiced, with some moving beyond being “expert informed” to positioning themselves as the experts who possess specialized knowledge superior to that of medical and educational experts. All told, I argue that mothering enactments are more diverse than is often portrayed by the concept of intensive mothering.     

Revisiting the Sexual Orientation Matrix for Supervision

Abstract

This article addresses the use of the Sexual Orientation Matrix for Supervision (SOMS) in preparing supervisees to work with GLBTQ families. Originally published as a tool to assist supervisors and educators to help their supervisees work more effectively with gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) couples, the SOMS is founded on two core concepts: (1) degree of heterosexual bias; and (2) degree of acceptance of GLBTQ orientations and behavior. In this revision, we have expanded heterosexual bias to include sexual identities, sexual orientations, and gender identities. Supervisors can employ the Matrix to explore their own and their trainees' levels of comfort, knowledge, and experience. We also provide specific suggestions and tasks.     

Gender Differences in Stories of Violence and Caring by Preschool Children in Post-Divorce Families: Implications for Social Competence

Themes of violence and caring in the spontaneous play of preschool-aged children in response to a revised version of the Attachment Story Completion Task (Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990) were analyzed in relation to their social behavior in child-care settings. All children (n = 66, 39 boys) lived in post-divorce families, primarily in the custody of their mothers. Some story enactments of violence predicted negative social behavior in child-care for both boys and girls. Other story enactments were strongly associated with gender and did not uniformly predict social behavior, suggesting that gender socialization plays a significant role in children's play representations of violence and caring. Implications for children's development and the interpretation of children's play behavior are discussed.     

The Darkest Continent

Psychoanalysis has paid much attention to anal sex and its interpretation, mostly pejoratively, while ignoring the pleasurable aspects of anal sex. There are numerous reports of fathers of gay men imagining their sons involved in anal sex, sometimes with disgust or horror, although the taboo is fading over time. Botticelli's (this issue) case is reconsidered from the perspective of both drive and object relations, which are not incompatible. Some enactments can result from the analyst's counterresistance to awareness of unacceptable feelings or reactions to the patient with consequent delay or avoidance of certain lines of inquiry.     

Domesticating technology for shared success: collective enactments of World of Warcraft

In this paper, we analyse processes of domestication as collective enactments, using online game playing of World of Warcraft as a case. We study how groups of players – guilds – develop practices and sense-making with respect to the technologies they use in their shared endeavours in raids to battle monsters. Previous studies of domestication have mainly focused on single-actor strategies and relatively little attention have been given to the impact of concerns for particular domestication outcomes, for example in competitive situations or with goals related to efficiency. This paper contributes to domestication theory by analysing what we call collective domestication in a performance-oriented setting, to see how domestication may produce compatible outcomes for individuals that need to act together. The paper is based on a one-year participant observation and qualitative interviews with players. Three types of players were identified – hardcore, casual and moderate – representing three rationales of play: a high level of performance, social benefits, or a combination of the first two. In the analysis, we compare how these three types of player groups’ domesticated the game. A main finding is that collective enactments of technology need extensive managerial efforts unless the group share a coherent and uncontested rationale for playing, thus being a moral community.     

When approved is not enough: development of a supervision consultation model

The dramatic increase in the literature that addresses family therapy training and supervision over the last decade has been predominantly in the area of theory, rather than practice. This article describes the development of a meta-supervisory learning context for approved supervisors and provides examples of interactions between supervisors that subsequently influenced both therapy and supervision. We delineate the assumptions that inform our work and offer specific guidelines for supervisors who wish to implement a similar model in their own contexts. We provide suggestions for a proactive refiguring of supervision that may have profound effects and benefits for supervisors and supervisees alike.