THE MELD EXPERIENCE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY SUPERVISION

Occasionally research shocks the researcher. This happened in a phenomenological exploration of the use of role-play in the supervision of psychotherapy as reported in this article. Role-play as presented in this article is used during a supervisory hour to bypass or supplement detached descriptions about clients. The therapist, after presenting to the supervisor some information about the client, the therapist's concerns, and the interaction in the therapy, enacts the client as genuinely as possible. Meantime the supervisor serves as ''therapist.'' When a good working relation exists between therapist and supervisor, such role-play brings a new dimension into the work. The experience of the role-playing therapist is not a literal reproduction of the work with the client. Rather, as this research shows, the experience derives from a deeper level of the engagement between the client and the therapist. The term meld is used to designate a phase in the role-play in which the therapist can no longer distinguish whether his or her words are from his or her own center or that of the client.