Polish psychotherapists and their generational attitudes towards supervision.
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Submission date: 2024-01-07
Acceptance date: 2024-01-18
Publication date: 2024-06-28
Psychoter 2023;207(4):51-63
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ABSTRACT
Objectives:
The aim of the study was to collect demographic data describing the population of Polish psychotherapists of various modalities and to examine their needs in supervision. In addition, the article discusses the issue of intergenerational differences between psychotherapists based on generational theories.
Methods:
The study was conducted using a proprietary survey, distributed online in 2022 (N = 257). The questionnaire consisted of 34 questions, including 4 open-ended questions and one special task, which concerned the needs of supervision.
Results:
Analyses suggest that supervision is highly popular among Polish professionals (98% of respondents use supervision), of which 61% use it online or in a mixed mode. Significant differences were found between older and younger psychotherapists (Chi-square = 14.682; p = 0.023) in terms of perceived differences between online and live supervision. No significant differences were found between individual generations in the perception of supervision in other dimensions studied. The analysis of ranks showed that the most important need in supervision is the supervisor’s attentiveness facilitating the ordering of the therapeutic process.
Conclusions:
Numerous results describing the population of Polish psychotherapists were obtained. It was found that there were no significant generational differences in the use of supervision. Generational theories are unlikely to be useful in this area and, based on the data collected, can be treated as stereotypical. The hierarchy of needs of supervisors does not differ significantly from the previous Polish study describing this subject. The authors ranked the needs in supervision according to their importance and proposed an “inverted pyramid of needs” in supervision.