I want to preface this post with an anecdote:
9 months ago.
I’m sat in an upstairs room of a grade-II listed property. It had been converted into an NHS clinic for secondary care psychological therapy. In front of me, my therapist. Behind him to my right, a large window that bled condensation onto the pane. The window overlooked a graveyard which served as an ironic reminder of my mortality. A steady flow of traffic passing the front of the building provided a constant ambient hum. We both mirror each other, crossed legged and sat on the diagonal. I can smell his laundry detergent and the orange he ate for lunch. It isn’t unpleasant.
A unifying feature of our conversations was our love for Michel Foucault. Neither of us had met someone with this particular interest and philosophy before. We subsequently applied all manner of critical theory to help us (me) to navigate difficult feelings and situations. He admitted that this was an experience he’d never had before throughout his many years as a therapist and clinical supervisor. This offering of information (or knowledge) felt personal and intentional.
I offered more as he shared similar insights that gave me a glimpse into his own life. His contextually unconventional, unreserved and unashamed admission of humanity helped to unblock aspects of myself that I’d kept hidden through fear of rejection and judgement. He laughed at the nature of my intrusive thoughts, which helped me to see funny side and ridiculousness of them also. He shared some of his own, which helped me to feel like I wasn’t completely unhinged. But above all else we spoke of authenticity, in that, perhaps I hadn’t been as authentic as I was clearly aching and hurting to be. He told me I needed to be braver in my relationships. I was trying to but I was afraid.
To quote myself from my previous post:
“. . . this is the nature of the dynamic and the space.”
In these moments of shared reflections and stories, we were establishing a tentative but sincere reciprocity of care. I had found some much needed validation in an intellectual equal and I think he did too. NB: this is a paraphrase of our parting letters we wrote to one another at the end of the therapy.
What I hadn’t anticipated was the visceral embodiment of the space. That sparsely decorated room with its unique energy became a suspension in time. I would look forward to the reprise in my week where I could escape the mundanities and difficulties of my day-to-day, to engage in the fantasy of what it felt like to be seen. Perhaps fantasy is the wrong word, but it’s the only word I can think of that conveys the taste of possibility.
In our roles, he facilitated and I negotiated the parameters. We held the space for one another. It was so evocative and resonant, I experienced grief likened to heartache after a loss. I spoke about the ending of this dynamic in a previous post: https://subjectsubspace.co.uk/dance-through-bluebells/
The main focus for many forms of relational therapy is the recreation of safe, validating relationships often intended to demonstrate or emulate the needs of the client or patient. It’s care-based and, fundamentally, this is affection-based. Therefore, any interpersonal work we undertake in these conditions is inherently affectionate.
These ideas of emulation and recreation float in and out of my thoughts. It’s a well known fact we often recreate and indulge in patterns of behaviour that feel comfortable or safe to us. Whether they are deemed positive or negative behaviours is irrelevant. What I believe tends to happen is that we recreate what serves to validate us in the moment. Whether that’s affirmation of our ability or the confirmation of recurring depreciating self-talk. This means that concepts of reciprocity are technical, free from any form of moralistic indicator (depending on the system of ethics you choose to apply, of course). It also implies that our enactments of reciprocity are mirrored simulations of our deep-rooted needs and desires, which we actively seek out and recreate within our relationships.
The following quote has been taken from Rachel Pollard’s Dialogue and Desire: Mikhail Bakhtin and the Linguistic Turn of Psychotherapy (2008) :
. . . we evaluate ourselves from the standpoint of others, and through others we try to understand and take into account what is transgradient to our own consciousness. Thus, we take into account the value of our outward appearance from the standpoint of the possible impression it may produce on the other . . . In short, we are constantly and intently on the watch for reflections of our own life on the plane of other peoples’ consciousness, and, moreover, not just reflections of particular moments of our life, but even reflections of the whole of it. [Bakhtin, 1990, pp.15-16]
What we do in the space is important, but what we do with it is perhaps more pertinent to consider. How we negotiate and traverse in our reciprocity of one another is integral to the development of space and subsequently, in our relationships. It is with this where I feel there are similarities between therapeutic and academic supervisory spaces.
What are we doing with the space?
Throughout my most recent supervision, the discussion would pull at the strands of thoughts based on the snippets of new knowledge I had offered and shared. It’s a very meta process, given the nature of my study. We danced between guidance and discussion, into a reflexive acknowledgement of intentionally highlighted points that alluded to the rationale of my supervisors and the structure of supervision. In among this was a golden thread which considered the broader institutional and global context as foundational perspectives. This was obviously and quite rightly pointed out by my lead supervisor in an attempt to gently coax me towards fleshing out the macro and meso layers to my micro-analytic considerations.
Much of my knowledge is determined by a prior experience which enables me to recreate the patterns and behaviours that have helped to empower me in previous supervisory settings. Utilising this knowledge provides me with the language to articulate my ideas. My conscious competencies allow me to do so confidently.
In effect, I also emulate the person I want to become. I would like to intentionally conduct myself as someone who is unnerved by institutional power and their associated personalities. Someone who is adept at navigating these dynamics with equal amounts of deep respect for my facilitators and guiders, and someonewho is encouraged by our mutually gentle assertion. This process of emulation dissects the transgradient technicalities of reciprocity, power and softness, alluding loosely to a fresh conceptualisation of academic supervision as a simulated and affectionate process.
There are many convoluted aspects to this simulation as an exploratory and creative process and probably where I’ll start the piece of academic writing I’ve been putting off for a while. These thoughts were catapulted by a recent article I had read by Curtis and Husband (2024). I found it fascinating to read about what they had done with their space via an interwoven narrative of creativity and care, as they each shared their subjective perspectives in their mutual navigation of institutional challenges.
Ultimately, whether bound by the institutions that try to contain us or the expectations projected onto us by prevailing assumptions: anything different we do in and with the space challenges the existing architectures of academic supervision. Just as deeply personal, therapeutic experiences challenge all we hold to be true about ourselves.
I think that’s really fucking exciting.