Clinical Supervision and Consultation 

“When a man is singing and cannot lift his voice, and another comes and sings with him,
another who can lift his voice, then the first will be able to lift his voice too."
​                                                                                       ~Martin Buber

Group Consultation

          As we will explore in the seminar, our patients are continuously communicating to us on multiple levels regarding the conflicts underling their suffering. They tell us stories about their lives in session that contain an obvious, surface meaning but also a more hidden, deeper meaning. They also recreate and enact with us their problematic relationship patterns. Our inevitable participation in those enactments can often provide a glimpse into our patients' deeper struggles. When drawn into a patient's relational dynamic, the clinician's listening center may become muffled and dislocated. In such cases, the perspective of another outside of that particular relational dyad is necessary to help recalibrate our clinical attunement to the conscious and unconscious messages our patient may be sending us.
          To this end, an optional clinical consultation session will take place after lunch on Friday afternoon from 2:30-4:30 pm. Participants will be encouraged to discuss case material from one or two sessions recalling, in particular, the sequence of the narratives and interventions offered in order to help decipher the derivative messages of both patient and therapist.
        These consultation meetings provide participants the opportunity to experience the implementation of the approach to attuning to patient material offered in the seminar by Dr. D'Onofrio and provide the occasion to practice one's listening in a new way. Matters of transference, non-transference, countertransference, non-countertransference, enactments, and parallel process will be fair game for our conversation.
          On a final note, speaking to other professionals about our clinical work can evoke feelings of exposure and vulnerability. Accordingly, we encourage participation in this activity from those individuals whose experience, sensitivity, and maturity will allow them to collaborate in creating the kind of secure frame that will welcome the interpersonal risks necessary for our clinical growth.  
“I felt my psyche needed a “shot in the arm”-- I feel I got it!”
                           
                                                                          ~Past Seminar Participant