KEY COMPETENCIES OF THE PSYCHODYNAMIC PSYCHOTHERAPIST AND HOW TO TEACH THEM IN SUPERVISION JOAN SARNAT Berkeley, California Four of Rodolfa et al.’s (2005) com- petencies in professional psychology—relationship, self- reflection, assessment-case conceptu- alization, and intervention—are key for the psychodynamic psychothera- pist. Relationship lies at the heart of what is understood to be curative about psychodynamic psychotherapy. Self-reflection implies a complex and highly developed process that in- cludes but goes beyond Rodolfa et al.’s and Kaslow, Dunn, and Smith’s (2008) definitions. Competent assess- ment, diagnosis, and case conceptual- ization entails making inferences about unconscious processes by ob- serving the client and also one’s own experience, and integrating these in- ferences with theory. Effective psy- chodynamic intervention is derived from what the psychotherapist has experienced, processed, and conceptu- alized about the relationship with the client and about the client’s internal object world. An extended vignette shows these competencies emerging in a psychotherapist-in-training, facili- tated by an intense interaction with a supervisor. Although the supervisory and clinical tasks are different, the supervisor provides a relationship experience that models these same competencies for the supervisee and catalyzes their development in the supervisee. Keywords: psychodynamic, supervision, relational, competencies Challenges of This Task The project of defining core psychotherapeutic competencies, undertaken in this Special Section of Psychotherapy, is an important one, although challenging from a psychodynamic perspective. Tuckett (2005) put the problem well in a paper that attempted to remedy the lack of a broadly accepted method of evaluating psychoanalytic candidates. He asked, How does one “develop a transparent frame work based on an empirically supported demonstration of analytic capacity” (p. 31) that is also sensitive enough and subtle enough to satisfy the psychoanalysts who would be called on to apply it? Any such framework “needs to take cognizance of the twin facts that there is more than one way to practice psycho- analysis and that it is necessary for the legitimacy of the field to avoid an ‘anything goes’” stance (p. 31). For Tuckett this meant finding “good enough” indicators of competent psychoanalytic practice, indicators that are both broadly defined and well enough selected that they can be agreed to by psychoanalysts who work from a variety of different psychoanalytic models. Tuckett’s (2005) solution to this problem is directly relevant to my task. He evaluated a psy- choanalyst’s functioning in terms of his or her capacity to sustain three linked “lenses” or “frames.” He called these the participant- observational, the conceptual, and the interven- tional frames. These three frames find common ground with four of the competency dimensions recently defined within professional psychology. Joan Sarnat, Berkeley, California. Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Joan Sarnat, 3030 Ashby Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94708. E-mail: jsarnat@post.harvard.edu Psychotherapy Theory, Research, Practice, Training © 2010 American Psychological Association 2010, Vol. 47, No. 1, 20 –27 0033-3204/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0018846 20 tapraid5/pst-pst/pst-pst/pst00110/pst2220revz xppws S=1 4/22/10 10:49 Art: 2009-0799