Abstract
Although the important role of supervision in the training of psychotherapists is generally well recognized, it does remain a neglected topic in daily psychiatric practice. An overview of the abundant literature written on the subject shows the paucity of papers that take the perspective of the supervisee and subjectively describe the experience.
A common difficulty of the supervisory process appears to be the management of the therapist's feelings both in his relationship with the patient and with the supervisor. This problem is approached from the point of view of the supervisee, using a group perspective. A clinical vignette, from a supervised individual psychotherapy process illustrates how supervision is a mourning process where frustrations and losses abound. The difficult task of working through these conflictual feelings is fundamental for the supervisee if he wants to learn from the experience. Within this painful process (and to avoid it) many defensive mechanisms are often used and are described by the author along with some of their possible psycho dynamics.