Relazioni/Presentations
No. 1 (2024)
Supervision in Gestalt Therapy: The Situational Perspective as an Antidote to Shame
Istituto di Gestalt HCC Italy
Abstract
This article draws on the various Gestalt studies on supervision, highlighting how each apply the principles of Gestalt psychotherapy. However, the humanistic turn that places the patient/therapist relationship in existential equality does not find clear application in the examples of Gestalt supervision, in the background of which the gap between those who know more and those who know less remains as the epistemological definition of the supervisory relationship. The author therefore proposes to revise the concept of supervision in Gestalt psychotherapy as a recognition of the therapeutic intentionality of the supervisee, within the phenomenological field co-created by supervisor and supervisee. In practice, the supervisor will apply this concept by shedding light on what the supervisee already knows about the patient, diagnostically, anamnesthetically, aesthetically, and relationally, and by supporting the intentionalities of both therapist and patient, which form the phenomenological field or supervisory situation. The author proposes at this point guidelines for how supervisors can actualise this perspective in clinical practice.
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