The Supervisory Process Reflected in Dreams of Supervisees

Supervision in psychotherapy is supposed to provoke strong feelings and to actualize old patterns of relating to authority figures. Dreams of supervised subjects contained more references to authority persons and were richer in emotional contents than dreams of nonsupervised subjects. It is suggested that the supervisory process should not only be described in terms of different learning stages but also in terms of emotional stages, where the beginning and end period mean a strong emotional investment.