“We Don't Get Fooled Again”…Or Do We? One Social Worker's Artistic Perspective on Supervisee Resistance and the Process of Meaning Making in Contemporary Psychodynamic Clinical Supervision

Abstract

In the following article I analyze the construct of resistance in contemporary psychodynamic supervision. I reframe supervisee behaviors that have been labeled as resistance and advance the idea that, at times, these behaviors may be better understood as attachment behaviors intended to reduce anxiety through the restoration of a particular state of relatedness to the supervisor. I supply a vignette from my own work to illustrate this point. Throughout, I highlight the influence of epistemology on supervision and advocate that the objectivist/constructivist distinction presents a dialectic to be embraced rather than a conflict to be resolved.