Use of relational strategies to repair alliance ruptures: How responsive supervisors train responsive psychotherapists.

Abstract

Inasmuch as therapist responsiveness is the crucial ingredient in psychotherapy success, teaching supervisees to be optimally responsive to their clients is the primary function of supervision. Responsive supervision is particularly critical when a trainee experiences a faltering or problematic working alliance with a client. In this article, I describe and illustrate how supervisors can work responsively, both explicitly (through instruction) and implicitly (through modeling) when their supervisees report a serious alliance rupture. Next, I illustrate, with the same case example, how quickly ruptures in the therapeutic alliance can lead to ruptures in the supervisory alliance when the supervisor is not sufficiently responsive to the trainee's needs and, instead, relies exclusively on case management. Throughout the article, I discuss how the construct of responsiveness fits within the substantial body of theory and research on relational processes in supervision.

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