Mastering Family Therapy

Journeys of Growth and Transformation

SALVADOR MINUCHIN
Supervision of the Therapeutic Encounter
In the chapters to follow, eight therapists relate their experiences in
my supervisory group. In addition to the stories of the supervision itself,
I asked each author to begin with a personal biographical statement
that would illuminate for the reader the values, biases, and
constraints that he or she brought to the therapeutic encounter and
how they affected both the supervisees preferred therapeutic style
and my work to expand that style. Also, since 10 years have now
elapsed since they wrote their original stories, I have asked each author
to write for this second edition a postscript to her or his story, detailing
if and how their supervisory experience with me has impacted
them and their clinical work during the intervening years. (The chapters
of Andy Schauer, who died prior to the publication of the first
edition, and of Hannah Levin, who died subsequently, do not contain
this postscript.)
Because my voice is heard throughout their stories in my comments
and interactions, it seems appropriate for me to offer a brief personal
statement as background to my role in the development of these
therapists.
Journey of a Supervisor
Who am I, as a supervisor? I come from a large family. My paternal
grandfather, who married three times, had nine children. My mother
was one of seven. Both my parents had been taught a strong sense of
family responsibility, and I learned it from them. My mother made a
point of buying groceries at my Uncle Samuels store even though it
was poorly stocked and some distance away. During the summer, my
rich cousins from my fathers family in Buenos Aires came to spend
vacations at our home in the sticks. My mother brought a distant relative
from Russia, who lived with us for 5 or 6 years until she married.
During the Depression, when we were very poor, my parents regularly

sent my mothers elderly father money that we needed for food.

We took it for granted that obligations were mutual. There was no
high school in my hometown, with its population of 4,000, so when I
finished elementary school I was sent to live with my Aunt Sofia. My
father went bankrupt in 1930 and spent the next 2 years as a gaucho.
My Uncle Elias helped him financially, and both of them regarded this
assistance as a matter of course. When my parentsby then living in
Israelbegan to age, I took it for granted that it was my job to take care
of them, as they had taken care of me as a child. I cannot vouch for the
details of my memories, but I know that what I learned about
relationships
in my childhood had to do with loyalty, responsibility, and commitment
toward the family, the clan, and by extension the Jewish
people.
I have started this discussion of supervision by defining myself by
my childhood learning because my relationship with my students has
been colored by the sense of obligation and commitment I learned as a
child. If you think about the values you hold most dear as a teacher, you
will probably discover that these values are rooted in your childhood.
I began supervising and teaching in 1952, when I was living in Israel.
I was the medical director of five residential institutions for disturbed
adolescents. Most of the children were survivors of Hitlers
Europe, but there were also children from Morocco, Yemen, Iraq, and
India. The staff of the institutions were psychoeducators who followed
Adlerian principles modified by their substantial experience in group
living, and they knew far more than I did about working with these
youngsters.
I was a young psychiatrist, and my training at a residential institution
for delinquent adolescents, located near New York City, hardly
prepared me for this population or this work. I was naive and ignorant,
and I knew it. Yet what I remember best from this experience was my
stubborn refusal to be crippled by what I didnt know. As a person, a
therapist, and a teacher, this has always been one of my characteristics:
I transform obstacles into a challenge to learn. My response to obstacles
is in phases. First I get competitiveenergized by the problems.

Next I get impatient, then depressed, and finally thoughtful. Once I

am engaged, the challenge is primary, and obstacles feel like
provocation.
The underpinning is emotional, but there is also an intellectual
response to the adventure of learning.
The years that followed my Israeli experience were restless and
productive. I trained as an analyst at the William Alanson White
Institute
in New York, but basically I was more interested in families.
When I moved to the University of Pennsylvania, as professor of child
psychiatry and director of the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic, I
created an institution that worked only with families and with principles
of family therapy. Here my persona as a challenger came to the
fore. I was a jumper of fences, challenging the rigidities of the
psychiatric
establishment. Perhaps we created new rigidities in the process,
but the challenge to individual treatment and traditional methods was
surely appropriate to the times.
It was in the 1960s at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic that I
first became a teacher and supervisor of family therapy. Looking back,
I am impressed by the discrepancy between my style of therapy and
my style of teaching at that time. My therapeutic style was an ensemble
of support, confirmation, and challenge. I was careful to join with
families, to assimilate their style, and to stay within their acceptable
range when challenging. I did not feel that teaching required the same
accommodation. I was confrontative and provocative, challenging
students
to learn. Perhaps I projected my own response to challengeand
my own process for meeting itonto my students.
My development as a family therapist provided both the building
blocks for teaching others and some skills that got in the way. In my
therapy, I developed a knack for reading nonverbal communications
with great speed and could jump from minimal clues to hypotheses
that guided the therapeutic process. I became comfortable with the
knowledge that these hypotheses were just instruments for creating

experimental contexts, trial balloons that helped make contact with

families and that challenged family rigidities by introducing multiple
perspectives. I moved by joining and then stroking and kicking, and
during that period the pyrotechnics of such sessions became known as
my style of doing therapy.
I transferred that style to my supervision. I would watch videotapes,
microanalyze segments, and jump to hypothesis building, excited
by the intellectual nature of the enterprise, the way the pieces of
the puzzle could be organized into a large framework, and the potential
adventure of joining with the family in exploring newness and creating
a different gestalt. I think my enthusiasm was catching, but I was
impatient with the slowness of other routes through which my students
could reach similar or different understandings, and I think this
period was difficult for the people I supervised. I did not give them
enough space or respect the idiosyncratic talent and difficulties that
they brought to the supervisory process.