Humility, ruptures, and rupture repair in clinical supervision: a simple conceptual clarification and extension

Abstract

ABSTRACTWe contend that supervisor humility, a critical variable for effective supervisory practice, has a particular impact on the rupture repair process and its implementation; it may well be preeminent in determining whether any supervisor repair effort meets with success or failure. Building on our earlier supervisor humility/rupture repair proposals, we further propose a simple humility/repair clarification and extension grounded in the idea that, though requisite and foundational, humility in and of itself is not enough. We subsequently give focus to what we label as the humility/rupture context, which involves four components: (a) the activating (rupture) event, (b) the type of humility needed for rupture repair, (c) the form of needed corresponding comfort, and (d) the corresponding opportunity that accordingly gets either addressed or missed. Just as humility can be categorized as relational, cultural, or intellectual, we believe that supervision ruptures in turn often tend to be relational, cultural, or intellectual in nature. We examine how that is so in what follows, providing case examples to that effect and offering a more specific, potentially researchable view about some seemingly crucial variables that increasingly render the likelihood of successful supervision rupture repair far more likely.