Intensive case supervision during child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapy training: An IPA study of supervisors’ and supervisees’ accounts of their experience

This study explores the experiences both of supervisors and supervisees in the intensive psychoanalytic supervision of their psychotherapeutic work with children and young people, and how both groups of participants understand its role and function as part of the child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapy training. Using the qualitative research method of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), the study explores through the data gathered from four participants’ communications during semi-structured interviews, in the context of the existing literature, how intensive case supervision supports and develops clinical confidence and a sense of growing clinical capacity in trainees during the child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapy training. Findings are concerned with six experiential themes: ‘Understanding an unconscious emotional experience’; ‘Using another person for help and support’; ‘Working with negative feelings’; ‘Growing up and finding one’s own way’; ‘The learning experience as an attitude towards difference’; and, ‘Feelings about the centrality and legacy of the experience’. Implications and recommendations for the provision and enhancement of intensive case supervision during child and adolescent psychotherapy training that facilitates authentic growth and development in a trainee, in parallel with the patients they work with, are considered. Areas of further research, including the need to understand better the experiences of trainees and supervisors from minority backgrounds and of different genders as well as how issues such as negative feelings towards trainees are managed in supervision, are identified.