Phone: 503.334.4239 Email: kstclair@karenstclairpdx.com
Copyright © 2013 Karen St.Clair. All rights reserved.
From the standpoint of the developing clinician, clinical supervision is the single, most important tool of advancement in the process toward professional maturity. Its impact is seen in a multitude of ways including proper assessment and evaluation, fluid movement through stages of treatment, effective rapport development and relationship building, efficacious risk management, and the overall ethical delivery of service that benefits the client. In the end, I serve the client first and foremost, and secondarily, my clinical supervisee.
Throughout the supervisory process, I attempt to use psychodynamic principles in a way which demonstrates and reinforces them to the supervisee. Additionally, this encourages a particular supervisor–supervisee relationship; namely, one that encourages the supervisee to reflect on the use of self in the therapeutic room. To that extent, clinical supervision acts as “therapy” about the clinical work, and requires a commitment to developing habits of self analysis. Mine is not a teaching process in which I give the answers to my supervisee. Instead, we agree to explore together how to best provide ethical and effective service to clients, who become my clients by extension.
If you are someone who is interested in examining how you use your self in the therapeutic room, in “parallel process”, and in the Socratic Method, then we may be a good fit. I encourage you to contact me so that we can talk further.
“Work Therapy” as Clinical Supervision
