The supervision pyramid: A commonalities-based synthesis of intervention, relationship, and person/personhood

Abstract

Adapting the therapeutic pyramid to the supervision of psychotherapy, the author presents and describes the supervision pyramid-a simple meta-model of the broad conceptual organizers of the supervisor's contribution to the experience and outcomes of supervision. The supervision pyramid consists of three commonalities: supervisor skills and interventions, the supervisory relationship, and the supervisor's person and personhood. Those three commonalities converge to stimulate supervisee learning and relearning and client improvement and symptom reduction. The implications of this meta-model for supervision conceptualization and conduct and for supervisor training are briefly described.