57

Michael Balint devised a framework for analysis for focal psychotherapy and supervision in the 1920s. This Hungarian physician, who was influenced by the thinking of Sandor Ferenczi, emigrated to Great Britain where he worked alongside Bion at the Tavistock Clinic in London. While the first groups were organised essentially for medical doctors they were extended over the 20th century to bring in practitioners from the medical-psychosocial, educational and therapeutic fields. The latter were called on to share in clinical practice (as a group or alone facing a supervisor) and so help the therapist resolve sometimes apparently inextricable situations through their enlightened observations. Having recalled the history of how these groups were created, the author describes three individual supervision sessions during which an inexperienced marriage counsellor brought in clinical situations in order to move towards a freedom of listening unencumbered by any subconscious representations that may hinder the process.