Passive-into-Active Testing in Supervision

The following text is a message from Mardi Horowitz to the e-mail list of SPR members (Society of Psychotherapy Research. It seems very interesting to me and sounds as if Mardi is describing a passive-into-active testing process in Supervision.

Dr. Reto Volkart, Zentrum fuer Psychotherapie (Center for Psychotherapy), Zurich (Switzerland), e-mail: volkart@zept.ch

"Thanks for the note on supervision: a good idea to focus on this topic, and some process research could be well done in the supervisor's context. Very often, midway in therapy, the trainee reverses roles so that the trainee acts with the supervisor to duplicate a difficult situation that the trainee has with the patient, observing and identifying with how the supervisorf handles this situation with the trainee in the patient's role. Formulation helps make this often unconscious process conscious so that reflective awareness can help form the trainee's capacities to cope with and help the patient.

Cordially, Mardi Horowitz"

• The word is spreading.. by Jessica, 1/15/99