Critical Incidents in Psychotherapy and Supervision

Download or read book Critical Incidents in Psychotherapy and Supervision written by Laurie A. Gray and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The following is an investigation of the nature of critical incidents in psychotherapy and supervision, and the possible parallel processes between them. Four psychotherapy trainees conducted weekly therapy sessions with 18 clients and attended weekly clinical supervision with six supervisors. Following each psychotherapy and supervision session, the participants engaged in a brief semi-structured interview during which they identified the most helpful and most hindering critical incident that occurred during the session. Using a discovery-oriented exploratory approach, judges developed overarching category systems into which they coded the critical incidents. The category frequencies were assessed using Chi-square analyses. Parallel processes between the psychotherapy and supervision critical incidents were reported in frequency tables. The results revealed that the clients most frequently reported receiving guidance as helpful during their psychotherapy sessions, whereas they most often identified therapist lack of finesse or skill as hindering. The therapist trainees most frequently identified experiencing catharsis and receiving guidance as helpful to their clients, yet described their own lack of skill and client behaviors (i.e., rambling, avoidance) as hindering. In supervision, the therapist trainees most frequently reported receiving guidance as helpful, whereas they identified issues related to the use of supervision time as hindering. The supervisors most frequently identified receiving guidance and gaining deeper understanding or insight as helpful to their therapist trainees, yet also described issues related to the use of supervision time as hindering. Interestingly, the participants also reported that nothing was helpful or hindering about some sessions. In over 50% of their therapy sessions, clients reported that nothing about the session was hindering to them, while in over 25% of the supervision sessions, trainees reported that nothing was hindering to their work in the session. Parallel process dynamics between psychotherapy and supervision were examined from psychotherapy to supervision (upward direction) and from supervision to psychotherapy (downward direction). Analysis of the parallel process data in both directions revealed that provision of guidance was the most frequently identified helpful critical incident paralleled between supervision and psychotherapy, whereas the most frequently identified hindering critical incident paralleled between the therapy and supervision sessions was the use of session time.