Long-Term Supervision in Groups: Opportunities and Challenges of a Language-Systemic Approach

Abstract

In this chapter a rigidly structured mode of systemic supervision in groups will be described and discussed. It has been developed through more than thirty-five years of supervision work in contract-based continuous groups with a wide variety of professionals, of which the oldest still running, is nearly thirty years old. Doing supervision this way has shown itself to facilitate a realm of dialogue where professionals over the course of their professional life cycle, may sustain and improve the quality of their professional work as well as of their own personal lives and health as professionals. Over the years, this mode of supervision has spread throughout Scandinavia, and a fellowship of supervisors has grown forth. Through practicing supervision on our own supervision work, on a regular basis, and through arranging local seminars and yearly conferences, we have come to see how understanding is an event. In this way of working, understanding and development of meaning is not an assignment to be fulfilled by anyone, e.g., a supervisor, but something that happens to us in the dialogic communion between our professional “consciousness.”