Hypnotherapy Supervision
One of the proudest accomplishments over my over 30 year career was to establish a nationally accredited qualification in hypnotherapeutic supervision. The necessity of supervision cannot be overstated. However, then as now, clinical experience in and of itself is not a qualification to be a supervisor. Indeed, even being a good hypnotherapist is not a qualification to be a supervisor. This point had to be argued with old guard therapists when the qualification was established.
The understanding of therapeutic process, to understand the therapeutic relationship to know what happens between a therapist and client is essential to understanding what supervisees bring to supervision sessions. The primary requirement for our course was that all students needed to have a qualification in counselling or psychotherapy as it is in these trainings, not hypnotherapy trainings, is where you learn about the therapeutic relationship and process.
Sadly, this qualification has been removed from the current incarnation of the course that my colleague Fiona Biddle and I created all those years ago. I understand that there are new ideas and approaches out there, this is the way a profession stays fresh. However, it is not necessary to throw out what is good and right in order to evolve. The supervisor is the public guarantor of a clinicians competence, this should not be left to chance and those who want to have this responsibility need to be out best, brightest and best qualified. Oh well, crying out in the dessert again.
