Parallel process is a phenomenon noted in
clinical supervision Supervision is used in counselling, psychotherapy, and other mental health disciplines as well as many other professions engaged in working with people. Supervision may be applied as well to practitioners in somatic disciplines for their preparatory ...
by therapist and supervisor, whereby the therapist recreates, or parallels, the client's problems by way of relating to the supervisor. The client's
transference
Transference (german: Übertragung) is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which the "feelings, attitudes, or desires" a person had about one thing are subconsciously projected onto the here-and-now Other. It usually concerns feelings from a ...
and the therapist's
countertransference
Countertransference
is defined as redirection of a psychotherapist's feelings toward a client – or, more generally, as a therapist's emotional entanglement with a client.
Early formulations
The phenomenon of countertransference (german: G ...
thus re-appear in the mirror of the therapist/supervisor relationship.
Origins and nature
Attention to parallel process first emerged in the nineteen-fifties. The process was termed reflection by
Harold Searles
Harold Frederic Searles (September 1, 1918 – November 18, 2015) was one of the pioneers of psychiatric medicine specializing in psychoanalytic treatments of schizophrenia. Searles had the reputation of being a therapeutic virtuoso with difficul ...
in 1955, and two years later T. Hora (1957) first used the actual term parallel process – emphasising that it was rooted in an unconscious identification with the client/patient which could extend to tone of voice and behaviour. The supervisor thus enacts the central problem of the therapy in the supervision, potentially opening up a process of containment and solution, first by the supervisor and then by the therapist.
Alternatively, the supervisor's own countertransference may be activated in the parallel process, to be reflected in turn between supervisor and consultant, or back into the original patient/helper dyad. Even then, however, careful examination of the material may still illuminate the original therapeutic difficulty, as reflected in the parallel situation.
[G. O. Gabbard, ''Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy'' (2010) p. 196-197]
See also
References
{{Reflist, 2}
Further reading
*H. F. Searles, "The Informational Value Of The Supervisor's Emotional Experience" ''Psychiatry'' (1955) 18:135-146.
*M J G Doehrman, "Parallel processes in supervision and psychotherapy" ''Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic'' (1976) 40:3-104
*H. K. Gedimer "The parallelism phenomenon in psychoanalysis and supervision" ''Psychoanalytic Quarterly'' (1980)49:234-255
Object relations theory