Counseling Center

Interns: How Individual Supervisors Are Assigned

During the intern orientation period early in August, all licensed staff (generally 7-9 people) participate in a group meeting with the new interns. During this meeting, prospective supervisors give brief presentations, focusing on their theoretical orientations, clinical specializations, and their styles and expectations as supervisors. Following this meeting, new interns have a chance to talk individually with potential supervisors in order to ask questions and to get to know them better.

Interns are then asked to rank order their top five choices of supervisors. The Training Director assigns two supervisors to each intern from these lists. Our expectation is that the intern will divide his/her caseload evenly between these two supervisors.

Midway through the internship year, interns are asked to re-rank their preferences. They are encouraged to keep one of their two supervisors for the entire year so that someone on staff is aware of their growth across the entire internship experience. Interns are also encouraged to change their second supervisor, in order to have a breadth of supervisory experience and to insure a variety of perspectives.

Training Staff

On this page, the training staff introduce themselves, their theoretical orientations, client populations of special interest, and supervision styles. We asked each training staff member to answer the following questions:

What is your theoretical orientation?
Which client issues/populations do you work with frequently?
Which client issues don't you work with?
How do you conduct supervision?

Training Staff Members

Jean Cunningham, Ph.D.

Roy Joy, Ph.D.

Don Mullison Ph.D.

Rosemary E. Simmons, Ph.D.

William R. Todd, Ph.D.

Holly Cormier, Ph.D.

Jean Cunningham, Ph.D. , Chief Psychologist

My major theoretical orientation is broadly psychodynamic. For me, psychodynamic thinking implies several things: a belief in the importance of early relationships (family of origin); a focus on the importance of the client-therapist relationship as the foundation for therapeutic work, and a generally developmental approach. Although I almost always think about clients in dynamic terms, the developmental part of my orientation alters what I do with them, depending on their needs and capabilities: I practice as an integrationist. I don't believe that there is one right way to do therapy, and I believe that therapy is enriched by having a broad range of possible interventions available. Cognitive and behavioral intervention can be extremely helpful, always in the context of a working alliance with the client. Generally, I believe in being flexible and in individualizing treatment.

I am a clinical psychologist by training, and most of my prior clinical experience was in community mental health. I am the sole graduate of an APA approved internship in a psychoanalytically oriented community mental health center in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Not something you run across every day-- it got approval one year, and then was reorganized out of existence the next.) I spent about nine years as a professor in the graduate clinical psych program here at SIU, and during five years of that time I worked part time at a rural community mental health center, providing direct client services and staff supervision and consultation. I value the opportunity to serve people who have minimal financial resources.

Like most people here, I have a lot of experience working with survivors of abuse, and I co-led the adult women's incest survivor group for several years. I frequently work with clients with severe psychopathology, including psychotic disorders and severe personality disorders. I know a fair amount about psychotropic medications. I have treated many depressed people. Particular groups I feel an affinity for include gay and lesbian clients, and also Asian Americans and Asian international students. I am comfortable supervising nearly any case. Since I am involved in most of the serious emergency cases in the agency, I am comfortable with and stimulated by crisis work.

My supervision style echoes an important principle of my therapy style, which is to meet the person on their own ground. I use a developmental model of supervision. I believe that successful supervision requires a safe, supportive environment, and that is my first concern. I have found that supervisees vary greatly, even at the internship level, in what they need and what they are ready for. Generally, though, interns are working on conceptual issues, and that is work I enjoy.

I enjoy supervision most when the person I am working with approaches it as an opportunity to learn and gain support. I'd like supervision to be a place to bring the toughest, most puzzling clients, as well as a place to enjoy successes. I like to view video tapes weekly, in part because I may see and hear things the supervisee is unaware of and thus can't report to me. This may include things about the client and things about the therapist-client relationship. Early in a supervisory relationship, I want to know where each case is week to week. As the relationship develops, I am ready to have the supervisee focus on a case or two per session, trusting that the rest are OK or I would have been told about it.

The internship year is a transition between practicing under close supervision and getting ready to practice independently. It is also a transition out of the graduate student role and into the independent professional role. I expect to spend supervision time on issues related to this transition. The job search is almost always something I talk with supervisees about, and I try to offer support and practical advice. Given my years as a professor, I can also offer help with dissertations.

Several of the interns I have supervised in the past came to internship with exclusively cognitive behavioral training. They chose to be supervised by me to add a dynamic flavor to their work (or to explore that possibility). We worked on understanding the role of historical issues in the client's current problems, and on affective issues in therapy. These supervisory experiences were fun for me, and I think for the interns as well.

Roy H. Joy, Ph.D., Consultation Coordinator

My theoretical orientation is best described as an integration of the psychodynamic, interpersonal, and cognitive-behavioral conceptual approaches to psychotherapy. However, when asked I call myself interpersonal because it best captures how I like to think about clients, my work with them, and the blending of these conceptual traditions.

Client populations that I work with most include individuals (adolescents and adults), couples, and families. As a generalist, I work with a broad spectrum of disorders and client issues. Those that I work with most include depression, anxiety and stress-related disorders, character-personality disorders, all forms of adjustment disorders, separation, loss, and divorce issues, identity problems, sexual abuse perpetration, couple/marital problems and family adjustment issues of all sorts (e.g., sexual dysfunction, adultery, blended family issues, parent-adolescent conflict, severe mental illness of a family member, abuse within the family).

I typically do not work with cases of severe eating disorder, active substance abuse and dependency, and dissociative identity disorders. As for modalities of treatment, I generally do not run psychotherapy groups.

My style of supervision is to work from a developmental approach whereby the supervision begins as more of a mentoring relationship (attending to and focusing on the conceptual/intervention skills/professional development needs of the therapist-in-training). Gradually, over time, my aim is to facilitate the development of a much more collaborative relationship between myself and the supervisee with the supervision itself approximating professional consultation and collaboration between professional colleagues.

Don Mullison, Ph.D., Training Director

I am an integrationist with a strong interpersonalist base. Yalom, Gustafson, also Strupp & Binder provide examples of the kind of interpersonalist approach I draw from. This approach has much in common with that of object relations theorists such as Winnicott. Each of the above understand the importance of relationship and a developmental perspective in doing the kind of work we do. In addition, I pull from several other areas I find important (e.g., systems theory, feminist writings, experiential/gestalt, humanist/existential, and various cognitive approaches). I believe that the relationship is very important, and thus, attend a great deal to interpersonal process. In doing this, I believe it is essential to pay very close attention to client affect. I like keeping up with research on emotion in psychotherapy, and have particularly enjoyed following the work and writings of Leslie Greenberg and Susan Johnson, among others.

I do a lot of work with clients struggling with relationship issues (e.g., with family, partners, friends, roommates, or people they work with). I see a large number of "survivors", defined broadly to include adult children of alcoholics, physical and/or emotional abuse survivors, and incest survivors- essentially clients from a wide variety of dysfunctional families. While I do a great deal of individual work, I also very much enjoy working with couples. Otherwise I am a generalist.

While I have worked with clients dealing with eating disorders with some modest success, I believe there are other staff members who know a good deal more about his population than I do.

Along with doing therapy, providing supervision is one of the most interesting, rewarding, and enjoyable things I do. I like to think that I bring a lot of this interest and energy to supervision in a way that those of you I work with can appreciate and value. If I do get an opportunity to work with you, I will first want to hear from you about what you see as your present needs and interests. it is important for me to hear about your particular learning style and the kinds of things you are wanting from a supervisor (in addition to things you are, perhaps, not wanting from a supervisor). I will be working to form a partnership with you that will allow us to design, together, a supervisory experience that is safe and useful, challenging and supportive.

I believe that one of my strengths as a supervisor is the ability to focus on process and affect. Identifying interactional patterns and exploring and working with client affect form a large part of the focus I naturally bring to supervision. To do this well, I need to listen to tapes so that my feedback can be helpful and specific. I enjoy seeing or listening to tapes and will ask that you give me what will be the most useful types of sections of tapes for you to have me hear. I value looking at relationship dynamics, which sometimes means looking at ourselves as well as our clients. I hope you will find me open to and welcoming of your feedback. I want to encourage an atmosphere in which you feel safe to learn and explore (and yes, to make mistakes, which are an unavoidable part of learning, therapy, and life). While I take supervision seriously, I don't believe it has to be grim. I think we can have a great deal of fun, if we allow ourselves to remain curious about what we do. After all, we will be doing some of the most interesting work imaginable.

Rosemary E. Simmons, Ph.D., Director

I was trained from a psychodynamic approach, so how I conceptualize clients is certainly based in this school of thought. I believe that early childhood experiences (both positive and negative) have a good deal of impact on how adults view themselves and others in their world. I went to Virginia Commonwealth University for my internship. I was heavily influenced by their strong group and diversity programs. The group work taught me the importance of the client-therapist relationship and also gave me permission to be more active in sharing my thoughts and feelings about the client and the process with the client. At this point I began integrating psychodynamic and interpersonalist approaches. These two approaches remain my primary orientations while being aware of the cultural/social influences. However, I use techniques and interventions from various schools of thought including cognitive, behavioral, solution-focused, and gestalt.

I work with a broad range of Axis I (mainly affective) and II diagnoses and developmental issues. I am assigned to work with a lot of women and men who are survivors of childhood trauma, especially childhood sexual abuse. I have also worked a lot with individuals who have eating disorders. Given my emphasis in sexual abuse and eating disorders, I became quite interested in PTSD, borderline, and avoidant personality disorders. Lastly, a fair amount of my caseload consists of gay, lesbian, bisexual clients who are presenting with a variety of issues. I receive these referrals due to my networking with GLB student groups, coordinating the Safe Zone project, and people knowing I am lesbian.

I have had little training in working with couples so I typically refuse to take couples clients. The exception is that I do see gay/lesbian/bisexual couples since I work with this population with some frequency.

I take a developmental approach to supervision. I believe counselors in training work through a variety of tasks throughout their development. I match what I do as a supervisor with the supervisee's needs. For interns that means that I talk with them very directly about their current goals within individual psychotherapy. In addition to skill development, I think the internship year is a time where interns integrate their academic work, clinical experience and their own personality into their identity as a psychologist. What I mean by this is that you are consistently who you are no matter if you are in session with a client, presenting a workshop or having lunch with a friend. This work can be too draining if you have to create a different persona every time you go to work.

How does this translate to what I do? Good question. First of all I work hard at creating a safe and supportive environment where you can truly be yourself. I want to give you plenty of space to grow and explore while at the same time be there to give you concrete suggestions regarding conceptualizations and/or interventions when you ask. I listen to tapes, read progress notes, and expect you to bring in the agenda for the supervision session. I will ask you about professional identity issues such as career goals, dissertation progress, and job search. I also view supervision as a place to vent when you are frustrated with a client, brag when you are proud of yourself or your client, and be saddened about the details of some of you clients' lives. Lastly, I want us to be able to create an atmosphere and negotiate a relationship where you can get what you need this year.

William R. Todd, Ph.D., Assessment Coordinator

Theoretical Orientation: Although I integrate therapeutic interventions from a variety of theoretical approaches into my work, I tend to borrow from some schools of thought more so than others. Specifically, I tend to conceptualize clients from psychodynamic, interpersonal, and multicultural perspectives while also using many cognitive and behavioral interventions. I also tend to utilize various techniques typically associated with emotion-focused therapy and gestalt theory.

Client Issues/Populations--Common: As the Assessment Coordinator, a significant proportion of my client-centered work involves testing and solution-focused interventions with clients struggling with various learning and/or attention difficulties. This is complementary to my work with students presenting with the psychological/emotional/developmental issues more commonly associated with a college counseling center. With these clients, I often work with: survivors of various kinds of trauma and/or abuse; international and/or multicultural students; students manifesting a variety of Axis II symptoms; as well as students mandated to seek counseling.

Client Issues/Populations—Uncommon: Although I have worked with clients struggling with various eating difficulties and/or ongoing substance abuse/dependency, I typically do not work with these populations.

Supervision: I love supervision. I love talking about clinical cases, reviewing videotaped therapy sessions, and working from a developmental perspective to help other therapists explore and develop their own professional identities. My supervisory work has two general forms: 1. In my role as the Assessment Coordinator, I supervise advanced practicum students and pre-doctoral interns in their testing and assessment work. This supervision is done in a group-supervision format and is more didactic in nature than the supervisory work I do with supervisees seeing personal/psychological/emotional clients. 2. In this work I tend to operate from the assumption that who we are as people directly impacts what we do as therapists. This is likely the reason why several of my supervisees have described their initial meetings with me as being experientially more like therapy than supervision. Working from a developmental perspective, I try to identify supervisees’ professional abilities/limits, and then supportively work with them to push and build on these abilities/limits. Although this tends to be hard work for both of us, my blend of seriousness and extraordinarily good humor seems to provide a safe, comfortable atmosphere in which to sweat it out.

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