Where Identity, Power, and Reflection Meet: A Different Kind of Supervision
Where Identity, Power, and Meaning Meet: A Different Kind of Supervision
Supervision, at least the way many of us were trained to experience it, can feel like performance.
You bring a case.
You present it clearly.
You try to get it “right.”
And somewhere underneath that, there is often something quieter happening:
uncertainty, self-doubt, a question you’re not quite ready to ask, a reaction you’re not sure how to name.
This is where I locate my work.
Because supervision, as I understand it, is not just about learning how to do therapy. It’s about developing the capacity to be with—with clients, with complexity, and with ourselves.
This post is grounded in foundational ideas from psychodynamic and multicultural supervision (Alonso, 1983; Sarnat, 2016; Tummala-Narra, 2004; Watkins & Hook, 2016; Gottlieb, 2021), but also shaped by my own work as a therapist, supervisor, and someone who has lived and worked across cultures for many years.
What Supervision Makes Possible
At its core, supervision holds multiple functions at once (Alonso, 1983):
It teaches theory and clinical practice
It supports emotional development and reflective capacity
It socializes us into the profession
It holds ethical responsibility
But when supervision is reduced to feedback or evaluation, something essential gets lost.
What I am most interested in is this:
Can supervision become a space where clinicians can think more freely, feel more honestly, and tolerate not knowing a little longer?
Because that is often where the real work begins.
A Psychodynamic Stance: Slowing Down the Work
A psychodynamic lens invites us to shift from What should I do? to
What is happening here—beneath the surface?
We begin to listen for:
The pull of the past in the present
Emotional undercurrents that don’t immediately make sense
Moments of resistance, defensiveness, or disconnection
The relational field between therapist and client—and between supervisor and supervisee
And importantly, we begin to include ourselves in that field.
Not as problems to fix, but as instruments of understanding.
This requires something that is not always emphasized in training:
the capacity to tolerate ambiguity, affect, and uncertainty.
The Relationship Is Not Secondary—It Is the Work
Relational supervision (Sarnat, 2016) asks us to take the supervisory relationship seriously—not just as context, but as method.
This means:
We co-construct understanding rather than deliver it
We stay curious about moments of tension or disconnection
We allow supervision to be participatory, not performative
And still, there is a tension we cannot resolve:
Supervision is inherently unequal.
There is evaluation. There is responsibility. There is power.
Rather than pretending otherwise, I think the work is to be in relationship with that reality—to name it, reflect on it, and remain accountable to it.
Supervision as a Cultural Encounter
There is no version of supervision that exists outside of culture.
Every supervisory relationship is shaped by:
Race, identity, and lived experience
Migration, language, and belonging
Professional and institutional power
Personal histories with authority
As Tummala-Narra (2004) reminds us, avoiding these dynamics does not make supervision neutral—it makes it limited.
In my work, I often see how much clinicians are holding:
Questions about identity they don’t feel invited to bring
Cultural tensions in their client work
Uncertainty about how their own positionality is shaping the therapeutic space
When there is room to explore this, supervision deepens.
When there isn’t, something contracts.
Cultural Humility as Ongoing Practice
Cultural humility is not a checklist. It is a stance.
It asks for:
Ongoing self-reflection
A willingness to not know
Openness to being impacted by another’s experience
Attention to power—both obvious and subtle
For me, this often sounds like:
“I wonder what I might be missing here.”
“I’m noticing an assumption I made—can we slow that down?”
It is less about getting it right, and more about staying in the process.
What I Pay Attention to in Supervision
Over time, I’ve noticed that clinicians don’t just need answers.
They need:
A place where they can pause without pressure to perform
Support in making sense of emotional responses
Space to explore identity, culture, and belonging in their work
Help developing a voice that feels like their own
And often, they need someone who can sit with them when things feel unclear—without rushing to resolve it.
My Approach
My work is grounded in a relational, systemic, and psychodynamic perspective, with a particular focus on:
Ambiguous loss and experiences of in-between-ness
Multicultural and international family systems
School-based clinical work
The emotional life of the clinician
I tend to work in a way that is:
Collaborative, but not unstructured
Reflective, but still clinically grounded
Warm, but willing to name what is difficult
I am less interested in giving you the “right” answer, and more interested in helping you develop a way of thinking that holds complexity.
An Invitation
If you are a clinician who is:
Working across cultures or in international settings
Wanting more depth than case consultation alone provides
Navigating identity, uncertainty, or emotional complexity in your work
Looking for supervision that feels thoughtful, engaged, and human
There may be a fit here.
Supervision, in my view, should not feel like something you have to get through.
It can be a space where you come back into contact with your thinking, your curiosity, and your capacity to stay with the work—even when it’s hard.
References
Alonso, A. (1983). A Developmental Theory of Psychodynamic Supervision. The Clinical Supervisor, 1(2), 23–35.
Gottlieb, M. (2021). The case for a cultural humility framework in social work practice. Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, 30(6), 463–481.
Sarnat, J. (2016). Supervision Essentials for Psychodynamic Psychotherapies. APA.
Tummala-Narra, P. (2004). Dynamics of Race and Culture in the Supervisory Encounter. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 21(2), 300–311.
Watkins, C. E., & Hook, J. N. (2016). On a culturally humble psychoanalytic supervision perspective: Creating the cultural third. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 33(3), 487.
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