Parallel process

Parallel process is a phenomenon noted between therapist/social worker and superviser, whereby the therapist recreates, or parallels, the client's problems by way of relating to the superviser.

The client's transference and the therapist's countertransference thus re-appear in the mirror of the therapist/supervisor relationship, and may be usefully studied there.

Origins and nature

Attention to parallel process first emerged in the nineteen-fifties. The process was termed reflection by Harold Searles in 1955,^[1] and two years later T. Hora (1957) first used the actual term parallel process - emphasising that it was rooted in an unconscious identification with the client/patient which could extend to tone of voice and behaviour.^[2] The supervisee thus enacts the central problem of the therapy in the supervision, potentially opening up a process of containment and solution, first by the superviser and then by the therapist.^[3]

Alternatively, the superviser's own countertransference may be activated in the parallel process, to be reflected in turn between superviser and consultant, or back into the orginal patient/helper dyad.^[4] Even then, however, careful examination of the material may still illuminate the original therapeutic difficulty, as reflectied in the parallel situation.^[5]

References

^ Parallel process in supervision
^ S. Power, Nursing Supervision (1999) p. 162
^ G. O. Gabbard, Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (2010) p. 195
^ P. Clarkson, On Psychotherapy (1993) p. 202
^ G. O. Gabbard, Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (2010) p. 196-7

Parallel process

Origins and nature

See also

References

Further Reading