Meeting the Trainee Where They Are: Beyond the Cliché
By George Hull
Editor, Pastoral Report - The Newsletter of the College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy
“If one is truly to succeed in leading a person to a specific place, one must first and foremost take care to find them where they are and begin there.”
-Soren Kierkegaard
"Meeting the trainee where they are" has become a familiar phrase within the clinical pastoral training movement. It is easy to dismiss it as a cliché. Yet beneath those familiar words lies one of the most demanding aspects of clinical pastoral supervision.
As supervisors, we naturally hope our trainees will deepen their understanding of themselves and their pastoral role within clinical or parish settings. We hope they become more reflective, self-aware, and confident in their pastoral identity. We also trust that, beyond formal training, they will continue to develop their pastoral competence through meaningful participation in a CPSP chapter. In this sense, supervision points beyond itself to a lifelong reflective practice of ministry that the CPSP chapter is called to nurture and sustain.
Wilfred Bion, the British psychoanalyst whose work is familiar to CPSP members through our emphasis on Tavistock group relations, offered a profound way of thinking about helping relationships. He encouraged psychoanalysts to approach each encounter "without memory or desire." Bion was not suggesting that we abandon what we know. Rather, he reminded us that our expectations and assumptions can prevent us from seeing what is actually before us. He invites us into a posture of agnosticism, an intentional willingness to remain open, to tolerate the ambiguity of not knowing, rather than rushing toward a certainty of opinion.
In CPE/T supervision, "without memory" means resisting the temptation to define a trainee by previous evaluations. Those evaluations may offer important insights, but they must never become the only lens through which we view the person in training. As our late colleague George Buck often reminded us, the supervisor's task is to remain curious and open, holding our impressions lightly while attending to the person of the trainee before us.
Lewis Carroll captured this beautifully in Through the Looking-Glass when Alice says, "It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then." None of us is quite the same person we were back then. Every meaningful experience leaves its mark on us. If this is true for us, it is certainly true for our residents and interns. They are continually being shaped by their encounters with patients and their loved ones, the medical staff, and fellow trainees in group work.
The resident who comes for supervision is a person in formation, shaped by experience and continuing to discover who they are as an individual and as a pastoral care provider. The supervisor's task is not to orchestrate or direct that process, but to create a space in which the trainee can reflect upon and integrate their learning. In this sense, the supervisor is like a midwife, accompanying one who is bringing forth something new that is already taking shape within them.
"Without desire" means letting go of the need to move the trainee toward predetermined outcomes of prescribed standards. Growth and transformation cannot be commanded. They emerge through the trainee's own engagement with experience and their struggle to make sense of it through the classical action-reflection model of clinical learning.
Perhaps this is what Bion was inviting us to understand: not the certainty of knowing who another person should become, but the humility of being present as they discover, through experience and relationship, who they are becoming and what their experience is teaching them.
The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead described life not as a fixed state of being but as a continual process of becoming. If Whitehead is right, then the privilege of supervision is not to determine what another person will become, but to accompany them as something new emerges through experience, reflection, and relationship.
This posture of supervision points beyond the training program itself. It prepares trainees for a lifetime of reflective practice within the CPSP chapter, where formation continues through consultation with trusted colleagues who offer both encouragement and accountability. Pastoral formation is never truly finished. We are all, trainee and supervisor alike, continually being shaped through experience, relationship, and reflection, learning to meet one another where we are in the moment while remaining open to who we are still becoming.
For Further Reflection
Group Dynamics and Group Supervision: A Wilfred Bion Perspective
This short lecture introduces Wilfred Bion's understanding of group dynamics, exploring his distinction between the Work Group and the Basic Assumption Group, together with the concepts of valency and projection. A companion lecture examines the role of the supervision group leader in light of Bion's theory. Together, these presentations form part of the group supervision module in the CPCAB Accredited Diploma in Clinical Supervision for Health Professionals at Aneurin Bevan University Health Board.
The CPSP Pastoral Report is grateful to Amelia Lynos for making this valuable resource available. Amelia serves as a Clinical Supervisor Trainer with the UK National Health Service (NHS) and is an accredited Balint Group Leader. She is also a qualified Group Analyst, Further and Higher Education lecturer, and Registered Mental Health Nurse (RMN). In addition, she designed and leads the CPCAB Accredited Diploma in Clinical Supervision for Health Professionals for Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, where she develops and curates its teaching materials. We are pleased to share her expertise with CPSP readers and hope this resource encourages further reflection on the role of group supervision in pastoral formation.
