Ethics II: Ethical Issues In Clinical Supervision
with Janine Wanlass, Ph.D.
Photo Art credits: Artist: Richard M. Markus | Reach 2022 | Digital Image Lens, 16 mm 1/25 sec at f/7.1 ISO 100
Psychoanalytic supervision is a complex process, particularly when it takes place in an analytic training program within an analytic institution. Ethical dilemmas arise for the supervisor, extending beyond ethics codes and requiring careful consideration of the supervisee-supervisor dyad and its impact on the supervisee’s clinical work. Blind spots for both supervisor and supervisee, transference dynamics, institutional pressures, training requirements, and differing developmental needs, of supervisees create significant challenges for the supervisor. This workshop discusses creating and maintaining an ethical stance in supervision and addresses common ethical issues in the supervisory encounter. Readings, clinical vignettes, and small group discussion will be utilized to promote learning about these complex ethical quandaries. Participants and encouraged to bring their own clinical vignettes.
Janine Wanlass, PhD is a psychoanalyst and psychologist practicing in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is a Professor of Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Westminster College, where she has taught for over 30 years. She is the former Director of the International Psychotherapy Institute (IPI) in Chevy Chase, Maryland, where she currently chairs the Combined Program in Child Psychotherapy and Child Analytic Training. She serves on the faculty development committee for the International Institute of Psychoanalytic Training, where she focuses on teacher and supervisor training for graduate analysts and faculty. Dr. Wanlass has published and presented about online teaching, supervision, and clinical practice. She has organized and taught in online and hybrid analytic psychotherapy training programs in the United States, China, and Russia for the past 10 years.
Format: Readings, clinical vignettes and small group discussion. This seminar is open to registered clinicians, working as therapists and/or supervisors, and students in a mental health field affiliated with an accredited training organization and involved in psychotherapy training and supervision.
Learning Objectives:
- Participants will identify 3 common ethical dilemmas that occur in psychoanalytic supervision.
- Participants will describe 2 ways to address ruptures in the supervisory relationship, which if unaddressed may contribute to problematic clinical encounters.
- Participants will articulate how cultural, institutional, and transference dynamics can impede learning in supervision and contribute to ethical “blind spots” in the supervisory process.
- Participants will describe at least 3 ways supervisors can examine and evaluate their ethical stance toward supervisees.
Readings from:
- Allphin, C. (2005). An ethical attitude in the analytic relationship. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 50, 451-468.
- Epstein, L. (2001). The collusive selective inattention to the negative impact of the
supervisory interaction. Contemporary Psychoanalysis 22:389-409. Reprinted in The
Supervisory Alliance, p.39-16. Northvale NJ: Jason Aronson. - Quinodoz, JM (1994). Transference of the transference in supervisions: Transference
countertransference between the candidate-analyst and analysand when acted out
in the supervision. Journal of Clinical Psychoanalysis, 3, 593-606. - Watkins, CE (2021). Rupture and rupture repair in clinical supervision: Some thoughts and steps along the way. Clinical Supervisor, 40 (2) 321-344.
- Watkins, CE, & Hook, JN (2016). On a culturally humble psychoanalytic supervision perspective: Creating the cultural third. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 33, 487-517.