Clinical Supervision Handbook - CAMH Knowledge Exchange ...

Ongoing Clinical Supervision
Yalom’s therapeutic factors and group supervision
• Yalom’s therapeutic factors are listed below and described in relation to the experience
of being a member of a supervision group:
• Instillation of hope: Within the context of group supervision, clinicians get a
sense that there is light at the end of the tunnel when working with challenging
clients. Hearing the experiences of others can highlight progress that the presenting
clinician might have lost sight of because he or she has lost some objectivity.
• Universality: A sense that clinicians are not alone in the work they are doing and
how they are feeling. Feeling validated from other clinicians who discuss similar
experiences with clients.
• Imparting of information: Providing information to others about the client, how
to work with them or the process of self-reflection.
• Altruism: Having the opportunity to help other staff.
• The corrective recapitulation of the primary family group: Traumatic re-enactments
play out in the team based on the clients projected experiences, power differentials
within the team and how these are processed, parallel process and how conflicts
are managed within the team.
• Development of socializing techniques: Learning how to communicate with one
another within the team using interpersonal feedback and constructive feedback
without judgment.
• Imitative behaviour: Learning how other team members work with clients and
each other by observing what they say and do in supervision.
• Catharsis: An opportunity to vent and label feelings.
• Existential factors: Issues that come from the person’s confrontation with the
“ultimate concerns of existence”: death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness.
In working with clients, a significant existential issue that clinicians encounter
over and over again is human suffering. Having an opportunity to process these
issues is helpful to clinicians who may otherwise feel overwhelmed.
• Cohesiveness: The sense of belonging and value within the team.
• Interpersonal learning: How the team interacts with one another in the here
and now while discussing a client can be a reflection of the client’s relationships
in the world outside (e.g., staff that takes on the negative aspects of the clients,
those who are the vessels of the positive) (Yalom, 1995).
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