 |
The late Donald Winnicolt, paediatrician and psychoanalyst,
introduced the concept of the ‘good enough mother’ — the mother who, when
her child throws the food back at her, does not overreact to this event as a
personal attack, or sink under feelings of inadequacy and guilt, but can
hear this event as the child’s expressing its temporary inability to cope
with the external world. Winnicott points our that it is very hard for any
mother to be ‘good enough’ unless she herself is also held and supported,
either by the child’s father or other supportive adult. This provides the
‘nursing triad’, which means that the child can be held even when they need
to express their negativity or murderous rage.
This concept provides a very useful analogy for supervision, where the ‘good
enough’ counsellor, psychotherapist or other helping professional can
survive the negative attacks of the client through the strength of being
held within and by the supervisory relationship. We have often seen very
competent workers reduced to severe doubts about themselves and their
abilities to function in the work through absorbing disturbance from
clients. The supervisor’s role is not just to reassure the worker, but to
allow the emotional disturbance to be felt within the safer setting of the
supervisory relationship, where it can be survived, reflected upon and
learned from. Supervision thus provides a container that holds the helping
relationship within the ‘therapeutic triad’.
In choosing to help, where our role is to pay attention to someone else’s
needs, we are entering into a relationship which is different from the
normal and everyday. There are times when it seems barely worthwhile,
perhaps because we are battling against the odds, or because the client is
ungrateful, or because we feel drained and have seemingly nothing left to
give. In times of stress it is sometimes easy to keep one’s head down, to
‘get on with it’ and not take time to reflect. Organizations, teams and
individuals can collude with this attitude for a variety of reasons,
including external pressures and internal fears of exposing one’s own
inadequacies.
At times like this, supervision can be very important. It can give us a
chance to stand back and reflect; a chance to avoid the easy way out of
blaming others — clients, peers, the organization, ‘society’, or even
oneself; and it can give us a chance to engage in the search for new
options, to discover the learning that often emerges from the most difficult
situations, and to get support. We believe that, if the value and experience
of good supervision are realized at the beginning of one’s professional
career, then the ‘habit’ of receiving good supervision will become an
integral part of the work life and the continuing development of the worker. |
 |
