Countertransference, supervision and the reflection process

This paper is concerned with the central importance of countertransference in the helping process, and with the role of supervision in helping therapeutically oriented workers to understand and make use of their own emotional responses to the client. The perils of being drawn into some kind of defensive "acting out" with the client are discussed. Case material is used to illustrate (a) the impact of the client's projections on the worker, and (b) the way in which supervision may itself become the arena for a "reflection" or re-enactment of an object-relationship from the client's internal world.