Meaning and loss of meaning in supervision

Analytic and philosophical literature suggests that repetitive failures to make sense of internal and external events can seriously undermine our inner meaning systems, leading to feelings of meaninglessness and despair. Accepting the absurdity of the wish for a completely predictable, understandable and manageable world relieves the despair and liberates us from clinging to generalizations and abstractions. It also encourages us to seek personal meanings of our evolving experiences and embrace the life we come to know. These insights are relevant for the supervisory process that helps the supervisee construct an inner clinical meaning system. Repeated failures to understand clinical situations can undermine the supervisee's clinical meaning system, leading to feelings of meaninglessness and despair in their professional life. Accepting the absurdity of wishing for an entirely predictable and understandable therapeutic world can liberate the supervisee from clinging to clinical generalizations and abstractions. It also encourages the supervisee to search for personal and authentic meanings of therapeutic experiences. The supervisor can promote acceptance of this absurdity by highlighting three components of the supervisory materials: metaphorical language, movement and process and embodied experiences.