Supervision Philosophy
You have inquired about supervision with JeaNette G. Smith, Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. In order to familiarize you with my qualifications, theoretical orientation, and some of the issues relevant to the supervisory relationship, the following Philosophy of Supervision has been prepared for your consideration.
As you know, I work from a systems perspective and specialize in treating couples. This is a very exciting specialty for me because I literally believe if you can save a marriage you can save the world. How could such grandiose results stem from a small therapist’s office? Consider the fact that the 70% of juveniles in state reform institutions grew up in single or no-parent situations, that fatherless children are twice as likely to drop out of school, that 72% of adolescent murders and 60% of America’s rapists grew up in homes without fathers. Much of the violence, the illiteracy and the poverty in the world could be alleviated if we could keep marriages intact. For this reason I have devoted my career to educating couples about marriage and saving marriages.
I became a Marriage and Family Therapist through a round-about means. My undergraduate degree was in communications and I spent the first 10 years of my career as a free-lance writer. Eventually I decided I was tired of interviewing experts and quoting them in articles. I wanted to be the expert that wrote the articles. I wanted to influence people’s beliefs and behaviors regarding the issues that concerned me: the state of the family. So at thirty years of age I went back to school to earn a graduate degree and I was 7 months pregnant with my 4th child when I received my master’s degree in counseling psychology.
Unfortunately, the degree in counseling psychology didn’t prepare me to treat couples the way I had envisioned. While in graduate school I had the opportunity to volunteer at the national AAMFT conference and also at the local AAMFT conference. At the national conference I attended workshops by Jay Haley and Chloe Madanes, saw videos of Whitaker and Bowen and was the guinea pig in a class taught by Alfred Ellis. Systems therapy made so much sense to me. How could you “fix” someone in your office and then send them right back into system they came from and expect them not to return to their prior ways? It seemed like a no-brainer to me that the solution was to “fix” the system.
Therefore, after I graduated with my master’s degree I sought supervision from a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, continued to attend AAMFT conferences, and attended the very first SMART marriages conference, sponsored by the Coalition for Marriage and Family Education. I attended these SMART marriage conferences year after year, receiving training in David Olson’s couples therapy, Harville Hendrix Imago therapy and John Gottman’s research based couples therapy. This extensive post-graduate training qualified me to take and pass the state licensing exam for Marriage and Family Therapists.
After working in a group owned by the LMFT who first supervised me for 7 years I started my own private practice and although I still see individuals on occasion, 80% of my practice focuses on couples. A three-year study I conducted on the couples I saw in therapy revealed that 4 out of the 5 couples who sought my assistance choose to remain married at the conclusion of therapy.
As a supervisor, I consider it my job to familiarize therapists with perspectives and skills that I have developed over the years that I feel will work well with the clients they see. In addition, I am available to help therapists better employ the theories and skills they bring to the supervisory relationship. Should I become aware of an approach that I believe is counterproductive, or non-productive to the client, as the supervisor, it is my job to re-direct therapist toward more effective interventions.
It may appear, judging from my experience as a marriage therapist, that I would be a speciality-based supervisor. Should someone seek my assistance to specifically help them treat couples I can readily provide that service. However, I have enjoyed providing supervision to therapists who do not treat couples exclusively. I follow several models while training individual therapists including a systems approach, along with conceptual and collaborative approaches. This is mostly a teaching approach, although when relationship issues creep into the supervision, I readily address them.
I choose to follow a collaborative model because I believe that knowledge can be acquired in a number of ways in many different areas. While I may be an experienced supervisor, I have not had the same life experiences as the therapist in training. Therefore, I can learn from the therapist, just as she can learn from me. In addition, a therapist who has recently completed graduate school may be more familiar with recent research then I, who have been practicing for some time. Because the therapist views the world differently than I do, her perspective may be equally insightful in assessing a client’s situation as is mine. Therefore, unless a therapist refuses to take influence from me as a therapist and begins to balk at my recommendations, I will readily consider his or her perspective.
One of the ways I can best teach a therapist to be tolerant of a client’s world view, even though it is different than her own, is to be tolerant of her world view. I can best teach a therapist to consider perspectives and directions that are far different than those she is inclined to recommend, if I am open minded about perspectives and directions that are not of my own concoction.
Again, were a therapist in training to take this respect and not return it with respect, I would become less egalitarian in my approach and far more directive. It is my belief that if I respect others, they will also respect me. However, if that proves not to be the case, I will take steps to unbalance the relationship in my own favor.
I believe that in order to maintain respect, and to earn the trust of a client, a supervisor must be ethical, honest, fair, and kind to others. Basic tenets of character must be practiced by the therapist in order to earn the respect of the therapist in training. A supervisor must honor contracts entered into, be they marital contracts or business contracts. An individual of character keeps her word. A therapist must be congruent, not irresponsible on the weekends and responsible during the weekday, but responsible all of the time. A therapist must treat everybody with respect, not selectively choosing those she likes to treat well, and then insulting or abusing, or taking advantage of those she doesn’t like. A therapist who does not practice ethical behavior will not earn the respect or the trust of the therapist she trains.
Should a therapist begin to behave in an unethical manner, or do something that lacks character, the supervisor is obligated to look at the situation, acknowledge the inappropriate nature of the behavior, and take steps to remedy it, even if it means seeking therapy herself.
