Existential Dialogue 2026: "Supervision" with Prof. Simon du Plock

Existential Dialogues 2026: "A Chorus of Voices"

Topic: "Supervision" between Prof. Ernesto Spinelli and Prof. Simon du Plock

“All existential practitioners are involved in clinical supervision, whether as supervisors, supervisees or both. Given this, it is important to problematise this phenomenon and establish how it can be most congruent with the values that infuse existential-phenomenological therapy. I will make a case that doing this leads us to understand it in a way that frees us from historical connotations of apprenticeship, over-sight, or the application of top-down expertise.
The emphasis is instead on relationship. Our knowledge and understanding of the world is derived through an irreducible grounding of relatedness. We can never understand human being – including our own being – in isolation. The world is a Mitwelt – or ‘with-world’. In existential supervision the supervisor is intimately enmeshed within a particular type of relational field. They cannot choose to focus only, or even primarily, on the therapist who sits with them; or even on the physically absent client. Nor can they take the client-therapist dyad, as reported by the therapist, as their primary focus. Instead their focus is required – if it is to truly acknowledge the foundational principle of relatedness – to encompass the particular ways in which relatedness expresses itself.
While this initially appears somewhat theoretical, I will demonstrate by drawing on practical examples how this focus can enrich our supervisory experience – as supervisors and supervisees – and support an explicitly existential engagement with clients. As I will show, this approach can lead not only clients but also supervisors and therapists to arrive at new understandings of their ‘sedimented’, or fixed beliefs about the world..” Dr. Yaqui Martinez.

Professor Simon du Plock was Head of the Faculty of Post-Qualification and Professional Doctorates at the Metanoia Institute, London from 2007 to 2020, in which role he directed counselling psychology and psychotherapy research doctorates jointly with Middlesex University. In 2020 he was appointed as the Institute’s Senior Research Fellow.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Medicine, a Foundation Member with Senior Practitioner Status of the BPS Register of Psychologists Specialising in Psychotherapy, and a Member of the BPS Register of Applied Psychology Practice Supervisors. He has been a BPS Chartered Counselling Psychologist and UKCP Registered Psychotherapist since 1994.
He has authored nearly one hundred journal papers and book chapters on existential therapy, and he has co-edited Existential Analysis, the Journal of the British Society for Existential Analysis, since 1993. He was an editor of the 2019 Wiley World Handbook of Existential Therapy. He has lectured and trained internationally, and in 2006 he was made an Honorary Member of the East European Association for Existential Therapy in recognition of his contribution to cooperation between West and East Europe in the development of existential psychotherapy.
His clinical and research interests include phenomenological research methodology, clinical and research supervision, existential pedagogy, and working with issues of addiction and dependency.

Recommended readings for “Supervision”:

Du Plock, S. (2009) Chapter ‘Existential Supervision in the World of Addictions’ in Emmy van Deurzen and Sarah Young (eds) Existential Perspectives on Supervision. Widening the Horizon on Psychotherapy and Counselling. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Du Plock, S. (2009) An Existential-Phenomenological Inquiry into the Meaning of Clinical Supervision: What do we Mean When we Talk About Existential-Phenomenological Supervision? Existential Analysis, the Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis, Vol. 20.2.

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