CREATING A "NEST" OF EMOTIONAL SAFETY: REFLECTIVE SUPERVISION IN A CHILD-PARENT PSYCHOTHERAPY CASE

Abstract

Reflective supervision is considered a key practice component for any infant mental health provider to work effectively with young children and their families. This article will provide a brief history and discussion of reflective supervision followed by a case study demonstrating the importance of reflective supervision in the context of child-parent psychotherapy (CPP; A.F. Lieberman, C. Ghosh Ippen, & P. Van Horn, ; A.F. Lieberman & P. Van Horn, , 2008). Given that CPP leverages the caregiver-child relationship as the mechanism for change in young children who have been impacted by stressors and traumas, primary objectives of CPP include assisting caregivers as they understand the meaning of their child's distress and improving the caregiver-child relationship to make it a safe and supportive space in which the child can heal. As this case will demonstrate, when a clinician is emotionally triggered by a family's negative intergenerational patterns of relating, reflective supervision supports a parallel process in which the psychotherapist feels understood and contained by the supervisor so that she or he is able to support the caregiver's efforts to understand and contain the child.

Keywords: Eltern-Kind-Psychotherapie; Supervision; beziehungsbasierte Praxis; child-parent psychotherapy; pratique basée sur la relation; pratique de réflexion; práctica basada en la relación; práctica con reflexión; psychothérapie enfant-parent; reflective practice; reflective supervision; reflexive Praxis; reflexive Supervision; relationship-based practice; sicoterapia niño-progenitor; supervision; supervision de réflexion; supervisión; supervisión reflexiva; スーパービジョン; 以關係為本的方法; 内省的スーパービジョン; 内省的臨床; 反思方法; 反思監督; 子ども-親精神療法; 監督; 親子心理治療; 関係性に基づく臨床.