Supervision of the therapeutic team

Systems of psychiatric care which are managed with a " community " orientation tend to provide patients with a series of " corrective emotional experiences ". The therapeutic team conceived as the patient's " alter familia " is considered to be the main therapeutic agent of change. Thus the basic therapeutic element lies in healthy communication between the various members of the team, shared by patients through a suitable group programme. But in the course of treatment for patients who are seriously ill, psychotic transfer, through a game of projective identification and projective " counter-identification ", creates counter transfer in therapists, giving rise to multiple projections which may result in the group feeling divided(Guimon, 1985) . Tension mounts within the teams, members seek at all costs to maintain the impression of perfect harmony,the " ideal family ", while maintaining an antiauthoritarian, egalitarian ideal by which the members of the team are all equal, and refusing to recognise the obvious differences in professional training and personality. This leads to what Sacks and Carpenter (Sacks et al., 1974) describe as a " pseudo-therapeutic community ". As part of the indispensable process of community team consultation, these antitherapeutic attitudes need to be changed to form " good enough teams "(Guimon, 1985) capable (like Winnicott's good enough mother) of coping with the needs of patients and avoid burdening patients with the team's own difficulties. Likewise other functions could be demanded from the " good enough team ": teaching how to deal adequately with reality, care of the self and others etc., as well as setting up an imaginary space or " illusion " (Winnicott, 1971) which in fact is the space for creativity and psychoanalysis.

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