Communication: The Social Matrix of Supervision of Psychotherapy (UMI dissertation #9511056)

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Communication: The Social Matrix of Supervision of Psychotherapy (1994;UMI #9511056)

		Teachers College Columbia University Dissertation Committee

		Professor Robert O. McClintock, Sponsor Professor Robert P. Taylor

		Professor Rene Arcilla, Examiner Professor Emeritus Maxine Greene, Examiner

Abstract

This dissertation is organized around detailed study of communication interactions between supervisor and supervisee in psychotherapist training. This particular communication arena is selected for study because of its exceptional communication-theoretical richness.

Psychotherapy supervision consists of conversation in which an expert on interpersonal communication (the supervisor) helps an expert on interpersonal communication in-training (the supervisee) develop his or her interpersonal communication skills. Their talk primarily attends to the supervisee's communicative interactions with patients in therapy, which the supervisee reports to the supervisor. It can also attend to the talk which thus arises between supervisor and supervisee, itself. The dissertation thus explores the study of communication, from the perspective of distinguishing persons' self-examination of their own current communicative interaction, versus their examining external communication situations and events.

The dissertation approaches this task via micro-analysis of verbatim examples of supervisor-supervisee conversations, taken from the literature of theory of supervision. The examples are examined to discover effects of inattention to the ongoing communication interaction. I then offer alternative communicative moves, at key points in the conversations, to show how the interaction could effectively attend to itself. The rescripted interaction is examined to show pedagogical and broader social benefits which can plausibly be anticipated as a result of greater self-reflection in communication.

A specific instance thus is presented of the mundane feasibility of Edmund Husserl's project of the universal transformation of human existence through the infinitely renewed rational reconstruction of all aspects of life -- another formulation of which is expressed in the text of William Ellery Channing's Baltimore Sermon of 1819:

"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." (1 Thes. 5:21)

This is offered as something which may appeal to persons to try to actualize and further in their own everyday activities, both in the particular pedagogical situation of psychotherapy supervision (with attendant benefits to patients' therapy), and elsewhere. The proposed paradigm, which I call "self-accountable conversation," is elaborated as a critically defensible, existentially meaningful option for individual and social living in the present, often called "post-modern," age.

[Note: Text in dissertation inside square brackets and colored maroon (like this) is annotations which I added while proofreading, and reflecting back on the dissertation and my process of having produced it, July 1998 (and after).]

Table of Contents

Abstract 20k (above)
Dissertation Proposal 32k

Introduction 50k

· Acknowledgements
· Purpose of dissertation
· Itinerary

Chapter 1: Theory (Part 1 of 3) 47k
Chapter 1: Theory (Part 2 of 3) 50k
Chapter 1: Theory (Part 3 of 3) 42k

Chapter 2: Description (Part 1 of 3) 52k
Chapter 2: Description (Part 2 of 3) 45k
Chapter 2: Description (Part 3 of 3) 45k

Chapter 3: Examples (Part 1 of 3) 75k
Chapter 3: Examples (Part 2 of 3) 60k
Chapter 3: Examples (Part 3 of 3) 46k

Chapter 4: Conclusions 46k

· Itinerary completed
· Broader context
· Dwelling for thinking

Bibliography 45k

[Afterword: Toward a place for study 27k....]
[More reflections on education and training 22k....]


	This dissertation was written on a 1993 Macintosh Powerbook 160 notebook computer (10 meg RAM), using Microsoft Word 4.2(?). Final deposit text directly printed on Macintosh Imagewriter II ink jet printer.