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Tracing the Development of
Clinical Supervision
Janine M. Bernard a
a Counseling and Human Services, Syracuse
University , 259 Huntington Hall, Syracuse, NY,
13244, USA E-mail:
Published online: 08 Sep 2008.
To cite this article: Janine M. Bernard (2006) Tracing the Development of Clinical
Supervision, The Clinical Supervisor, 24:1-2, 3-21
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J001v24n01_02
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Tracing the Development
of Clinical Supervision
Janine M. Bernard
SUMMARY. Major developments in clinical supervision over the last
twenty-five years are reviewed and contrasted with supervision as it was
understood and practiced early in its development. Recent areas of
growth are divided into those that attend to the infrastructure of supervi-
sion (organizational matters, ethical and legal issues, and evaluation),
variables that affect the supervision relationship (individual differences,
relationship processes), and the enactment of supervision itself (models
of supervision, modalities for conducting supervision). Commentary is
included on all major developments. doi:10.1300/J001v24n01_02 [Article
copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service:
1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <docdelivery@haworthpress.com> Web-
site: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> ©2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All
rights reserved.]
KEYWORDS. Clinical supervision, infrastructure of supervision, his-
tory models organization
Janine M. Bernard, PhD, is Professor and Chair, Counseling and Human Services,
Syracuse University, 259 Huntington Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244 (E-mail: Bernard@
syr.edu).
This article is based upon a plenary presentation at the First International and Inter-
disciplinary Conference on Clinical Supervision, June 2005, Amherst, NY.
[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: “Tracing the Development of Clinical Supervision.” Bernard, Janine
M. Co-published simultaneously in The Clinical Supervisor (The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 24, No. 1/2, 2005,
pp. 3-21; and: Supervision in Counseling: Interdisciplinary Issues and Research (ed: Lawrence Shulman, and
Andrew Safyer) The Haworth Press, Inc., 2005, pp. 3-21. Single or multiple copies of this article are available
for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service [1-800-HAWORTH, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (EST).
E-mail address: docdelivery@haworthpress.com].
Available online at http://cs.haworthpress.com
©2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1300/J001v24n01_02 3
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I’d like to begin with an appeal for empathy. I’m sure many of you
have been in the situation of looking at a title you chose for a paper or a
presentation and saying to yourself, “What was I thinking?” Deciding to
trace the development of supervision at this point in its evolution is a lit-
tle like reviewing the growth of Websites over the last 15 years. Well,
not that bad, but you certainly understand my dilemma. And, of course,
my qualms are exacerbated by both the fact that my audience consists of
many of the people responsible for the development of clinical supervi-
sion over the last few decades, and that this conference itself continues
the push toward development. And as a last disclaimer, although I at-
tempt to keep an eye to the development of supervision in other disci-
plines, I am certainly most grounded in counseling and psychology. So,
with your permission, I would like to alter the title of this address to
something like Highlighting Particular Developments of Clinical Super-
vision.
Exactly 25 years ago, George Leddick and I published an article in
Counselor Education and Supervision entitled “The History of Supervi-
sion: A Critical Review” (Leddick & Bernard, 1980). And until I started
to prepare for this plenary, I don’t think I had gone back to read that arti-
cle. But I thought doing so would be fun to see where we were then,
where we’ve come since then, and comment, to the extent I am able, on
some of the key developments of clinical supervision.
In 1980, it was still relatively simple to review everything that was in
the professional literature on the topic of clinical supervision, especially
if you ignored social work, which at the time we did. [For an exemplary
review of the history of social work supervision, I recommend Munson
(1993).] So, let me begin with a brief review of where we were then and
use that as the springboard for where we’ve come since then.
Leddick and I asserted that supervision as we knew it in 1980 had be-
gun in earnest in the mid to late 1920s within the practice of psychoanal-
ysis. (This timing, I have since learned, is not that different from the
inception of supervision as a topic within social work.) By the late 1950s,
Eckstein and Wallerstein had published their classic text (Eckstein &
Wallerstein, 1958) in which they described the process of supervision
using the analogy of a chess game, that is, having an opening, a mid-
game, and an end game. Eckstein and Wallerstein described the opening
phase of supervision as a period of assessment where both supervisor
and supervisee were sizing up the other in terms of strengths and vulner-
abilities. The mid-game was characterized as a time of interpersonal
conflict that included attacking, defending, probing, or avoiding. This
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stage of obvious conflict was also viewed as the working stage of super-
vision. (While we presently view harmful or conflictual supervision as
an anomaly of supervision, Eckstein and Wallerstein apparently saw
conflict as normative, most likely because they were focused on super-
vision relationships that were relatively long-term.) Finally, these au-
thors viewed the end game of supervision as characterized by the more
silent supervisor who supports a more independent supervisee. With
this last stage, Ekstein and Wallerstein reflect what Stoltenberg (1981)
later referred to as the conditionally autonomous supervisee working
within an environment that is low on structure, high on influence, and
predicated on supervisor competence as a therapist.
While psychodynamic theory was directly addressing supervision as
early as the 1950’s, client-centered theorists and behavioral theorists
were addressing supervision more indirectly. By that I mean that Rog-
ers (1957), Krumboltz (1966), and Lazarus (1968), to name a few, had
not truly articulated a supervision process separate from their therapies.
Modeling was the intervention of choice as these masters apprenticed
new therapists. Because each of these therapies was predicated on as-
sumptions different from other therapies, supervision practices that
grew out of them seemingly had few functional similarities.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Truax and Carkhuff (1967) were
making inroads into client-centered thinking and attempts were made to
codify empathy. The work of Ivey and his associates (Hackney, 1971;
Ivey, 1971; Ivey, Normington, Miller, Morrill, & Haase, 1968) to break
down process behaviors led eventually to “training” as we now know it
and instruction was firmly added to modeling for skills development. In
hindsight, it could be speculated that as important as training models
were to the development of psychotherapy competence, they may have
stalled supervision development because of their focus on microskills
and their relative inattention to what we would refer to as the supervi-
sory relationship. Having said this, it is important to acknowledge the
contribution of Mueller and Kell in 1972. These authors had sensibili-
ties that were quite integrative. They addressed trainee vulnerability and
defensiveness in a way that reflected psychodynamic thinking; they
proposed that supervisors offer facilitative conditions to address super-
visee defensiveness; and they spoke of supervisee goals for learning
that reflected comfort with behavioral terminology. Still, at this point in
the history of psychology and counseling, supervision was clearly em-
bedded within theories of psychotherapy.
Janine M. Bernard 5
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While Norm Kagan’s work has been occasionally elevated to a
model or demoted to a technique, it seems to me that when Interpersonal
Process Recall was introduced as something around which supervision
could be organized (Kagan, 1976; Kagan & Krathwohl, 1967), the hold
of psychotherapy theory to dictate supervision was relaxed, never to re-
claim total dominance. Or perhaps we were all getting to the same point
in our thinking about the supervision process and Kagan was riding the
same wave as the rest of us. Certainly Simon’s classic description of the
origins of live supervision in the late 1960s must be viewed in this con-
text (Simon, 1982). Whatever the impetus, by the late 1970s and early
1980s, models were being developed that specifically addressed super-
vision. Stoltenberg’s (1981) developmental model and my Discrimina-
tion Model (Bernard, 1979) are such examples. Hess’s 1980 edited text
in psychotherapy supervision (Hess, 1980) simultaneously redefined
supervision, it seems to me, by including discourse on legal issues in
clinical supervision, and racial, ethnic, and social class considerations
in supervision. While Hess’s text still emphasized psychotherapy mod-
els of supervision, it also gave considerable emphasis to relationship
variables. Especially for psychology and counseling, I don’t think it’s
an overstatement to say that the Hess text became a template for books
that followed, continuing to the present (e.g., Bernard & Goodyear,
2004; Bradley & Ladany, 2000; Falender & Shafranske, 2004; Munson,
2002).
I’d like to end this trip down memory lane by underscoring some
omissions that Leddick and I noted in our 1980 review:
•While supervisor roles were being discussed, there was very little
discussion of technique or competencies;
•Any specific focus on differences between supervisors and super-
visees was lacking (e.g., learning styles, personalities, theoretical
differences);
•Reference to systematic evaluation of supervisees were minimal
(I should note that the exception to this was the work of Kadushin
who included a chapter on evaluation in the 1976 edition of his text
on supervision in social work [Kadushin, 1976].);
•Reference to delivering feedback in a manner that was develop-
mentally appropriate or that took into account supervisee charac-
teristics was lacking;
•There was no discussion of training supervisors;
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•There was no discussion of evaluating supervisors;
•Finally, there was no discussion drawing from educational special-
ists to help us conceptualize supervision.
In summary, then, and with full knowledge that I am most assuredly
missing some essential contributions, in 1980 we were just beginning to
break away from a view of clinical supervision that was organized
around psychotherapy theory. Because of the previous dominance of
psychodynamic influences within supervision literature, we were still
focused primarily on intrapersonal differences between supervisor and
supervisee and viewed relationship variables mostly within those limits.
At that time, we simply were not entertaining the notion, for example,
that a concrete sequential supervisee might find the direction of an ab-
stract random supervisor to be frustrating. Those kinds of individual
differences as the focus of supervision were simply below our radar in
1980. With the exception of marriage and family therapy, which devel-
oped standards for supervisors in the early 1970s (Falvey, 2002), we
were not doing much at the time to professionalize supervision. Ethical
codes specific to supervision were non-existent. And implications of
the Tarasoff case (Tarasoff vs. California Board of Regents, 1974) were
just beginning to infiltrate our awareness. To underscore the fact that
this was a different time, may I add that in 1980 attachments were feel-
ings between people, not manuscripts that arrived on your desktop. For
that matter, your desktop was the top of your desk in 1980 (something
seen by some and not by others). It was a fundamentally different time.
Or was it? Perhaps looking at some developments over the past 25 years
will help us decide.
I have arrived at the more difficult, if not impossible, aspect of the
task I gave myself, which is to recognize some of the most striking de-
velopments in supervision over the last 25 years. In the first edition of
our text (Bernard & Goodyear, 1992) Rod Goodyear and I commented
that, in 1992, clinical supervision was still in its adolescence growing
energetically and randomly as adolescents do. Between 1992 and 2004
(i.e., the first and third editions of our text) the field simply exploded, as
reflected in part by the number of filing cabinet drawers I now devote to
supervision reprints. Suffice to say that the interest in clinical supervi-
sion has been vigorous over the last quarter century producing a good
amount of research, new approaches to the various tasks of supervision,
and significant contributions that I would place under the heading of
professionalizing supervision. For my remaining time, I would like to
offer a conceptual map of the contributing factors that make up clinical
Janine M. Bernard 7
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supervision as I understand it (see Figure 1), and offer some comments
about some of the main thrusts since 1980.
While preparing for a workshop a couple of years ago, I developed
this figure in an attempt to deconstruct some of the contributing ele-
ments to supervision. While I believe most of us think of the “doing” of
supervision when we refer to the term, my figure is an attempt to under-
score the importance of a structure to support the activity of supervi-
sion, as well as to highlight relationship dynamics in their various forms
as also influencing the central activity of delivering supervision. Using
Figure 1 as an outline, I’d like to try to track and comment upon (a) ad-
vances we have made in professionalizing supervision, specifically in
the areas of organizing supervision and in our understanding of the ethi-
cal and legal parameters of supervision; (b) the ever growing and deep-
ening literature around individual differences and relationship processes
that influence supervision; (c) advances in our thinking regarding mod-
els of supervision; and (d) advances in modalities used by supervisors.
But first, I’d like to offer a metaphor that may help you to understand the
contributing elements of supervision as I do.
If conducting supervision is anything like conducting music, the in-
frastructure is the stuff without which the performance appears un-
choreographed. The infrastructure gives each musician the same sheet
8 SUPERVISION IN COUNSELING: INTERDISCIPLINARY ISSUES AND RESEARCH
Infrastructure
Supervision Process
Variables That Affect
Relationship/Environment
Organizing Supervision
Ethical and Legal
Consideration
Evaluation
Supervision Models
Techniques for
Individual
Supervision
Group Supervision
Live Supervision
Individual Differences:
Cognitive Style
Theoretical Lens
Cultural
Characteristics
Relationship Processes:
Interpersonal
Triangles
Working Alliance
The Role of
Attachment
The Role of Anxiety
Transference/
Countertransference
FIGURE 1. Supervision Survey
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of music; it provides instruments to play and an adequate sound system;
it organizes sections if it’s a symphony or lowers the lights if it’s jazz. In
other words, infrastructure enhances the talent of the musicians rather
than frustrating that talent. Occasionally, brilliance can break through
an inadequate infrastructure, but most musicians will be pulled down by
potent inadequacies.
Individual differences and relationship processes determine the qual-
ity of the music. Are all the musicians in sync? Have they taken the time
to tune their instruments? Are they all on the same page? Do they come
to the performance with a feel for the music? Or are they mechanical in
their approach? Are they experienced at this process and comfortable
performing? Or are they in disharmony with themselves or with the task
at hand? In short, most of the intangibles that distinguish a good perfor-
mance from a bad one fall in this category.
The process of supervision is the type of music we will be hearing. It
may be a sweet symphony or a dark and heavy dirge; it may be the pre-
dictability of a Souza march or the unpredictability of jazz. In supervi-
sion we call the type of music models or modalities. Despite the genre of
music, however, it is strongly influenced by infrastructure and relation-
ship variables. In other words, the performance will be as good as the at-
tention that has been paid to these seemingly extraneous conditions. Or
conversely, if attention has not been paid to them, the performance will
be compromised by a microphone that fails, an instrument that hasn’t
been tuned, or a musician with her head in another place. Furthermore,
in leaving the performance, these annoying disturbances can come to
define the experience of the audience (and most likely the musicians)
more than the selections played.
With this metaphor in mind, I’d like to begin the update by address-
ing the task of organizing supervision.
ORGANIZING SUPERVISION
When I teach supervision, I always begin here. I do this for two rea-
sons: (1) it provides some tools to help my students organize themselves
before they meet their first supervisee; (2) it gets an admittedly dry sub-
ject out of the way first. This second reason is part of my rationale for
addressing this topic early.
While the practice of supervision has always been organized, more or
less, the professions weren’t talking much about it 25 years ago. And, to
be honest, unlike topics such as ethical issues in supervision and models
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of supervision, there is still relative silence about organizing the deliv-
ery of supervision. In Bernard and Goodyear (2004), we remarked that
the personality profiles of clinical supervisors may lean in the direction
of relationship variables rather than infrastructure variables. Still, the
last 25 years have pushed us in this direction, albeit kicking and scream-
ing for some.
Again, I want to note that social work supervision was tuned into in-
frastructure early on (Kadushin, 1976). Perhaps this is because social
work supervision grew out of a pragmatic concern for what was occur-
ring in the field. Social work supervision and fieldwork supervision
were almost synonymous before 1980 and are still more symbiotic, it
seems to me, than supervision as it is discussed and studied in the other
mental health professions. For the rest of us, supervision has been more
focused on paradigms, techniques, and relationship than structure.
The impetus for the change that has occurred, I believe, has come pri-
marily from two places. The first of these is the use of technology in su-
pervision. At this point, I’m not talking about newer technologies, but
the movement toward using direct samples in supervision that were in-
troduced by persons like Kagan (1976) in the form of IPR and Haley
and Minuchin (Simon, 1982) in the form of live supervision. While
gaining traction in the 1970s, using videotape, audiotape, and live su-
pervision capability took off in the 1980s. In what I believe is the first
comprehensive book in family therapy supervision, Liddle, Breunlin,
and Schwartz (1988) devoted several chapters to what they called the
pragmatics of supervision which included the types of infrastructure
needed to use technology well. In summary, our increasing interest in
complicating the process of supervision by the use of technological aids
simultaneously required increased attentiveness to organizational mat-
ters. The more technology is central to supervision, the less spontaneous
it can be.
The second driving force for tightening up infrastructure is a combi-
nation of accreditation, certification, and regulatory mandates that dic-
tate life within academe. I trust that any of us in accredited training
programs or accredited internship sites can attest to the amount of organi-
zation that is required to meet standards. We must insure that supervision
is conducted by persons with particular credentials and in particular ways.
We must conduct particular evaluations and use these to inform future
practice. And all of this must be documented. To a lesser extent, these
kinds of practices are replicated for individual needing to document
post-graduate supervision, at least until one attains certification or lic-
ensure. While this represents what might be viewed as the annoying, in-
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trusive part of accreditation and regulation, some good things have
emerged as well. More supervisors use contracts to inform their super-
visees of what to expect in supervision. Professional disclosure state-
ments are fairly commonplace. In general, the context for supervision
has tightened up, providing perhaps more quality control. I concede that
these practices can potentially hinder creativity or at least spontaneity
within supervision. Whether we have arrived at an optimal place in this
matter is an unknown. While some studies have indicated that disorga-
nized supervision is dissatisfying (Magnuson, Wilcoxon, & Norem,
2000), in general this is an area that has not attracted the researcher.
ETHICS AND LEGAL PARAMETERS
I’m sure it surprises no one, that there have been significant develop-
ments in the ethical and legal area since 1980. While AAMFT (American
Association for Marriage and Family Therapy) formalized standards for
training of clinical supervisors as early as 1971 and AMHCA (American
Mental Health Counseling Association) did so in 1989 (Falvey, 2002),
ACES (Association for Counselor Educators and Supervisors) was, I be-
lieve, the first mental health professional group to develop ethical guide-
lines specifically for supervisors (Supervision Interest Network, 1993).
While other professions have increased in their sensitivity to supervision
in their ethical codes, occasionally devoting a section to supervision, I be-
lieve counseling is still unique in having separate ethical standards for su-
pervisors.
Interestingly, the 1993 ACES guidelines were not late relative to the
attention given to supervision ethics in the mental health literature.
While the 1980s gave us a few key contributions in the area of ethics
and supervision (e.g., Bernard, 1987; Cormier & Bernard, 1982;
Kitchener, 1988; Whiston & Emerson, 1989), it was the 1990s that rep-
resented a heightened interest in all aspects of ethical and unethical be-
havior. Certainly the ethical transgression of choice was that of the dual
relationship, equally known as a boundary violation. We studied inci-
dence and type of violations and filled the literature with admonitions.
Pearson and Piazza (1997) classified dual relationships for us ranging
from the benign, through the potentially harmful, on to the insidious,
and ending with the truly sleazy. It seems that we exhausted the topic
(and perhaps ourselves) in the 1990s because there hasn’t been a whole
lot of additional work since 2000. Yet, unlike other areas in the develop-
ment of supervision, it’s difficult to say if we’ve made much progress in
Janine M. Bernard 11
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our ethical behavior. The study reported by Lamb, Catanzaro, and
Moorman (2003) found that 40% of those psychologists who had en-
gaged in sexual relationships with students or supervisees were either
ambivalent about their behavior or did not view their involvement as
harmful to the other individual. So, it’s possible that the additional at-
tention paid to this topic in the ’90s has not translated to a heightened
professional superego.
As a different outcome of our collective focus on boundary viola-
tions, I became aware over the past couple of years that sensitivity to
dual relationships was putting too much distance between me and my
students. As a result of my understanding of the evolution of profes-
sional ethical sensibilities, I was seeing a potential troublesome encoun-
ter around every corner. I found myself pining over my early years as a
counselor educator when doctoral students became friends before we
hooded them. Last summer, I was fortunate to spend some quality time
with a colleague of many years from another institution (now retired). I
realized that she had not fallen victim to the same brand of timidity that I
had, and had rich relationships with former students based on both pro-
fessional and personal experiences they had shared while these persons
were still students. Since that time, I have enjoyed breaking some of my
over-zealous rules about boundaries and am inching back to some de-
gree of normalcy. Therefore, as I reflected on this development in the
area of clinical supervision, I considered that the results are dubious for
both transgressors and nontransgressors. Still, without evidence to the
contrary, I will assert that it is good that we’ve come this far (wherever
that is) and that we have some interesting empirical work and thoughtful
commentary to help us navigate ethical waters within supervision.
It wasn’t until I was preparing this plenary that I realized the extent to
which legal topics predated ethical topics in the supervision literature.
Slovenko’s (1980) chapter on legal issues in psychotherapy supervision
was certainly my first education in the area. While Slovenko leaned
heavily on opinions gleaned from therapy and translated these to super-
vision, the Tarasoff (1974) case had caught the attention of therapists
and supervisors alike. Tarasoff was (and still is) for supervision what
Miranda is for law enforcement. The word itself gets one’s mental
wheels turning. Since then, relatively few cases have emerged in the
courts that address supervisors directly or even indirectly. (Falvey
[2002] identified 12 such cases.) Still, in light of our generalized liti-
gious nature as a country, legal implications of supervision are here to
stay.
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EVALUATION
I would posit that some of the ways that supervision has been formal-
ized have been key to establishing a clearer context for evaluation. While
there certainly has been progress in the area of evaluation, I want to high-
light one development that is situated in the area of evaluation but has eth-
ical and legal implications, and that is our relatively new focus on the
supervisees with problematic behaviors (e.g., Forrest, Elman, Gizara, &
Vacha-Haase, 1999). (While the mental health professions have drifted
toward the use of the term “impaired supervisee,” Falender, Collins, and
Schafranske [2005] admonished that use of the term is only advisable
within the parameters of the Americans With Disabilities Act.) We’ve al-
ways had problematic supervisees and they’ve always worried us, but the
last 5 to 10 years have found us more deliberate in our confrontation of
the problem. It makes sense that the professionalization of supervision
has made us more transparent and, therefore, more vulnerable when
supervisees with serious issues are sanctioned to become members of the
mental health delivery system. And this is as it should be. I acknowledge
that, for supervisors, supervisees with significant problematic behaviors
are sure sleep busters; yet, the thoughtful work of persons like Forrest and
her colleagues has been both challenging and consoling in the way that
one is always in a more peaceful space after one has confronted one’s de-
mons. Certainly, my circle of close colleagues have put new energy into
early identification of troubled trainees and we come to the task of con-
fronting the problem of these supervisees with knowledge of potential
pitfalls that our predecessors were lacking.
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND RELATIONAL THEMES
I would now like to move to the opposite wing of my figure and ad-
dress topics that fall under the umbrella of relationship variables. While
the development of our understanding of individual differences and our
ongoing investigations of the interpersonal dynamics within supervi-
sion both fall under this umbrella, they need to be separated because
their histories are so different. Let me begin with individual differences.
Individual Differences. If I may, I’d like to stereotype the thinking 25
years ago in order to draw a contrast to our thinking today. In general
(though there were certainly exceptions including both Gardner’s [1980]
and Bodsky’s [1980] contributions), individual differences were viewed
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as differences in intrapsychic health across supervisees. Supervision,
then, more closely mirrored therapy by identifying a deficit in the
supervisee and attempting to rectify the deficit through supervision.
Theoretical differences were also acknowledged and the solution here
was to screen supervisees for theoretical fit or, if that wasn’t possible, to
ignore differences in theory because the supervisor always won any-
way! My point is that individual differences were primarily conceptual-
ized as the supervisee’s problem. The profile of the supervisor was
seemingly unquestioned. Like the Wizard of Oz, the supervisor hid be-
hind, and was sometimes puffed up by, his (sic) authority.
Perhaps in this area more than any other, we have enjoyed a true para-
digm shift in the past quarter century. While some individual differ-
ences are still perceived as a “problem,” they are more often viewed as
differences to be accessed, honored and accommodated, but not to be
eliminated. Constantine (2005) reviewed the major contributions that
have assisted supervisors in addressing cultural differences within su-
pervision. She also noted the gap between our present accomplishments
and any right we may eventually have in claiming multicultural compe-
tence within supervision. Our interest in cultural differences and their
effect on therapy and supervision has been a hallmark of the last 25
years and shows no sign of waning. To date, it’s interesting to note that
our efforts within supervision have been found to be too timid ...ortoo
arrogant . . . certainly too ignorant . . . and often (sadly) irrelevant.
We’ve had some false starts to be sure but with the kind of research sug-
gested by Constantine, the next 25 years will certainly help us find more
productive avenues to accessing and engaging culture within supervi-
sion.
Other individual differences have also attracted increasing attention
since 1980, including some that reflect personality and others that reflect
cognitive style, cognitive complexity and so forth. It seems to me that our
focus in these areas is a statement that supervision has reached a point
where there is an agreed upon base upon which to function (whether
that’s theoretical, practical, or professional) and we are now able to pay
attention to mediator and moderator effects, thus indicating a turning
point in our collective research agenda. Because of the endless possibili-
ties in this regard, as well as our modest gains thus far, this is an area that
will most certainly continue to draw our attention.
Relationship Processes. Interestingly, this is perhaps the one area in
which “where we were then,” and “where we are now” is not all that dif-
ferent. It’s not that we haven’t refined our understandings of concepts
like the working alliance, power, resistance, attachment, parallel pro-
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cess, countertransference and so on within supervision because we have
(haven’t we?). But when it comes to the relationship between supervi-
sor and supervisee, we were in our element from the beginning and we
are drawn back to the relationship womb whenever we get tired of eval-
uation forms, supervision contracts, and the videorecorder that just
stopped working. The literature on relationship processes within super-
vision was rich in 1980; it’s richer still today.
What is new in the more current literature is its fusion with the indi-
vidual differences literature . . . and that really is very different from
where we were in 1980. A nice example of this is the new text by
Ladany, Friedlander, and Nelson (2005) where the authors study inter-
personal conflicts and crises drawing from an awareness of individual
differences as well as old standbys like countertransference.
In summary, the broad area of relationship variables is the hardest
area to comment on because of its vastness, its breadth, and the relative
youth of supervision literature in general. Relationship factors continue
to be where the action is, literally. Everything else revolves around it.
That was true 25 years ago and it’s true today.
MODEL DEVELOPMENT
As I stated earlier, in 1980, psychotherapy-derived models of super-
vision were still dominant. We were truly at a crossroad in this regard.
In the early ’80s, the field of supervision would turn its attention to de-
velopmental models (Stoltenberg, 1981; Loganbill, Hardy, & Delworth,
1982; Littrell, Lee-Borden, & Lorenz, 1979) and what Bernard and
Goodyear (2004) refer to as social role models and Falender and
Shafranske (2005) refer to as process-based models. My comments will
focus on developmental models and then quickly move ahead to the
present.
The developmental framework for working with supervisees cap-
tured the imagination and the trust of the professions in the early 1980s.
The premise that we are engaged in a process that stimulates progress
along some developmental continuum was and is too affirming to dis-
card. And, even while developmental models have been criticized for
their lack of empirical support (e.g., Fisher, 1989; Holloway, 1987), the
basic assumptions proposed by Stoltenberg, Delworth, Littrell, and oth-
ers are fundamentally embedded in our consciousness as supervisors.
Better research is still needed surely. We’ll get better at figuring out
how to measure developmental milestones and the conditions related to
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these. Because if the developmental proposition is fundamentally flawed,
then supervision is reduced to case management and gatekeeping. I pre-
fer to maintain my faith in the developmental paradigm even if its prin-
cipal contribution remains intuitive. To that extent, it’s comforting to
remember that it is in good company!
Since the explosion of the early 1980s, model development in supervi-
sion has been relatively low-key. In the last 25 years, the professions have
been more engaged in model refinement, model exploration, and limited
model testing (Castle, 2004). Constructivist theory has found its way into
supervision (e.g., Bob, 1999), including solution-focused approaches
(Rita, 1998; Triantafillou, 1997). Time-honored psychotherapies, such as
psychoanalysis and cognitive-behaviorism, continue to refine their ap-
proaches to supervision. But all in all, model building has not driven the
last 15 or so years of supervision discourse. What is sometimes referred
to as a new model, such as feminist supervision, is really the infusion of
an ideology into supervision, and therefore a transformation of existent
models rather than model development per se. Similarly, the application
of models to new contexts, populations, or for particular purposes has
been a lively and enlightening aspect of the literature over the last 25
years.
MODALITIES/TECHNIQUES
In 1980, we had individual supervision, group supervision, and live
supervision. We had the audiotape and the videotape. We had tele-
phones. We did not have the Internet. The question is what are we doing
now that we weren’t doing then?
A review of the modality literature of the last five years (Smith,
2005) identified sixteen articles, nine devoted to e-technology, four dis-
cussing peer supervision, and five articles related to creative expres-
sion. I found this to accurately reflect my own thoughts about where we
are in the world of modality and techniques. While individual supervi-
sion and live supervision have received modest attention of late (i.e., in
relation to each as a modality), group supervision is receiving renewed
attention. The need for peer supervision in work contexts that do not
provide other forms of supervision is one reason for the renewal. Econ-
omy is obviously another. But I also think group supervision had been
neglected in the past, especially in light of its potential (c.f., Proctor,
2000).
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The Internet has also opened up new possibilities for the process of
supervision. We are still somewhat caught between those who are in-
stinctively attracted to cyberspace and those who are afraid of it on this
issue. For those who prefer to live in cyberspace, the question becomes
whether their major contribution is conquering geography while deliv-
ering traditional forms of supervision. (That alone has the potential of
being an enormous contribution.) My guess is that, indeed, the Internet
has the power to change some of the fundamentals of supervision. To
date, research in this area is minimal.
Those who are cautious of the Internet and its use for supervision fo-
cus more on quite reasonable fears about confidentiality issues and the
demise of the supervisory relationship if e-supervision or other forms of
Internet-enhanced supervision take over. For the present, we need both
of these camps to keep us honest. Certainly the next quarter century will
affirm one if not both.
And finally, while much of supervision was organized around the
intrapsychic in 1980, an increasing amount of supervision now seems to
be addressing the right brain. Constructivism has contributed to this in-
terest by encouraging us to consider the variety of ways by which we
can understand our experience. Developmental thinkers have stressed
the importance of reflectivity for therapists. One outcome has been in-
creased interest in art (Bowman, 2003), metaphor (Sommer & Cox,
2003), sand tray work (Fall & Sutton, 2004), and play (Drisko, 2000) as
useful tools broadening and deepening the supervision experience.
CONCLUSION
As I look back at the last 25 years of development in clinical supervi-
sion, I believe we have moved from “fledgling” to “robust.” The numbers
of books and articles on clinical supervision have increased exponen-
tially; more voices have emerged; the discipline has been significantly
enhanced by inquiry and thoughtful commentary. Simultaneously, su-
pervision has emerged as a distinct professional activity, separate from
psychotherapy, with its own ethical codes, and regulatory bodies. Yet,
despite this growth and increased sophistication, despite the Internet,
despite increased requirements for documentation to avoid vulnerabil-
ity in an increasingly cynical environment, the core of supervision re-
mains something Ekstein and Wallerstein (1958) understood over 45
years ago. Supervision is fundamentally a generative enterprise that en-
hances the supervisor only through the enhancement of the supervisee.
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Everything else we can say about supervision must somehow inform
this fundamental contract. Some of the growth over the last 25 years can
become a distracter to this enterprise; some of our newly acquired in-
sights, especially about the supervisory relationship, have hopefully en-
hanced it. But at the end of the day, supervision was, is, and will be
defined by the realization of our supervisees that they understand the
therapeutic process and themselves at least a tad better than when they
entered supervision, and our own realization that we have been players
in the professional development of another. It is as simple and as pro-
found as this.
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