Entering into Different Worlds: Ethnographic Participatory Supervision for Bilingual Clinicians

Shi-Jiuan Wu, Ph.D., &Arlene Katz Ed.D.

Discourse lives, as it were, on the boundary between its own context and another, alien con-
text. (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 284)
In order to write of my childhood I have to translate. It is as if I am writing about someone
else. As a boy, I lived in French; now I live in English. The words dont fit, because languages
are not equivalent to one another... Its not that the boy couldnt understand these phrases. It
is that in order to do so, he would have to translate, and that would mean engaging an elec-
trical circuit in his brain, bypassing his heart. (Sant, 1997, p. 99)
I suppose I am never completely present in any given moment, since different aspects of
myself are contained in different rooms of language, and a complicated apparatus of air-
locks prevents the doors from being flung open all at once. (Sant, 1997, p. 111)

An Invitation vited to speak about their cultural experiences

This article is written to introduce a way of su-
pervision for bilingual clinicians who are prac-
ticing therapy in their local language and neces-
sarily are having to navigate between their local
language and English. For one of us (SJW), a
Chinese clinician practicing therapy in an Eng-
lish dominant discourse environment, fitting-in
with the developed theories, journal articles,
presentations of well-organized workshops and
conferences had always been the priority in her
professional development. However, she was
aware that something about herself as a person
was still missing. She did not at first realize what
it was. But as she began to work with her super-
visor (AK), she was able to articulate these con-
cerns in ways which made sense to her. From
SJWs perspective, the overall concern of bilin-
gual trainees is that if they are supervised solely
through the dominant supervision discourse
(such as various supervision theory models)
without receiving much curiosity about what
might be the unknown, they are not often in-
and how such experiences inform them as a
person and therapist in a moment to moment
kind of practice. How bilingual practitioners
travel between their native language and English
is rarely addressed in supervision. Consequently,
their voice is not fully present; only the voice
that fits into the mainstream can be present.
In supervision with AK, SJW experienced many
moments of being invited to speak in her own,
indigenous, native voice. It created in her not
only a sense of access to her own language and
culture, but a new sense of resourcefulness. To-
gether, we felt that in the local world we were
building together, we could draw on both the
Chinese and the Western worlds (Katz & Shot-
ter, 1996; Shotter & Katz, 1996). Each of us
could be, and were struck by events which
raised possibilities for navigating between the
world of Western professional language and
culture, and SJWs own Chinese language and
culture.
Ethnographic Participatory Supervision
To give it a name, we can call this different kind
of supervision, Ethnographic Participatory Su-
pervision. Although it resonates with and builds
on some of the ideas of collaborative language
system (Anderson & Goolishian, 1988) and re-
flecting process (Andersen, 1991) approaches, it
elaborates on them in perhaps unexpected ways.
We share with them an emphasis on relational
meaning as co-constructed through reciprocal
conversations and constant co-reflection on a
moment to moment, ongoing basis. Central to
our stance, however, is the crucial role we attach
to events which we feel signal the making of
significant differences in the clients world. We
focus on events, on poetic moments, which
arouse in us the most curiosity and wondering.
A poetic stance of this kind invites and ad-
dresses multiple potential possibilities instead of
a single kind of truth (Katz & Shotter. 1996;
Shotter & Katz, 1996).
Joint Creative Engagement in Ethnographic
Participatory Supervision
In order to understand SJWs local and practice
experiences of working with Chinese clients, we
tracked the process of supervision in our local
worlds. SJW kept a journal, recording in it
events which illustrated the differences between
her Chinese and Western sensitive practices in
the following manner:
1. Conversations with clients were docu-
mented and reflected on before her ethno-
graphically sensitive supervision with AMK.
2. These reflecting notes were brought to su-
pervision and co-reflected with AMK.
3. Then we documented this conversation.
4. And then we began the process againSJW
talked with clients, documented, reflected
and brought the writings again back to su-
pervision.
This on-going documentation of reflections
and co-reflections allows us to collect data and
to reflect on the data as we move along. Such a
self-articulating, self-elaborating process allowed
SJW to begin to describe her own practice from
within it, both to herself (in her own inner dia-
logues) and to others (including AK) (Katz,
2
Siegel, & Rappo, 1997). It encouraged her to
articulate what she was doing from within her
doing of it in such a way that she could grasp
how to carry it across from one situation into
another.
For SJW, crucial in doing this, were certain
ways of speaking, certain words of AK which
drew her attention to issues which otherwise
would have passed by unnoticed. AK, so to
speak, entered into SJWs world to remind her
of the something she had felt early to be
missing from her psychotherapeutic experi-
ences: what is at stake for each of us in our
lived experience, for clients, supervisees, and
supervisors alike. Psychotherapy became no
longer only a cognitive process for SJW. She
began to sense from the inside, so to speak,
why her Chinese experiences mattered.
Multi-Cultural Episodes
For SJW, the turn to a more multi-cultural
stance began with the following questions and
response:
AK: Would you like to bring your Chinese case
notes to our next meeting? So we can talk about
your clients experiences in her own words?
SJW: I have never thought about that I can do
this with my Chinese client in English-speaking
supervision. What a wonderful idea! Yes! I defi-
nitely want to give it a try after so many years of
losing my usage of my mother language in su-
pervision.
Later co-reflections
SJW: I was totally shocked when my supervi-
sor asked me to bring my Chinese case notes to
supervision. I could not believe what I heard
but felt so welcomed in bringing in the clients
own language and my native language. My heart
was pounding fast and I felt more openings
would come. I could not wait. Its just a wonder-
ful moment. Later I thought about what does
this mean to me. It means my memories from
being a Chinese finally gets invited in my own
language, not just primarily in English. This is
very special for me.
AK: I was struck by Shi-Jiuans embodied
sense of herself and others, and how an imme-
diate sense of what matters and what is mean-
ingful can get invited. There is a difference be-
tween a position of having to translate and
work out what matters through a professional
framework and re-claiming a sensibility from
her own language and the nuances of her
worldan immediate and spontaneous sense
from Chinese.
SJW: I was given significance and voicerather
than felt differences being silenced, colonized. I
feel I can be more who I am and this can help
me enter my world with others and appreciate
words differently.
But why was SJW so moved by such a simple
invitation? The risk to the bilingual clinicianthe
loss, in practicing therapy and having supervi-
sion solely in a dominant language settingis
that all the nuances, sounds, local phrases, sen-
sations from the local language are put aside if
not openly welcomed. The bilingual clinician is
not able to access her local resources through
her mother-tongue language. Sometimes this is
of crucial importance. We offer below what
could appear as a typical referral of a client
who is depressed. Yet we soon realize that we
cant automatically translate depression from
Chinese to English. A whole world opens up
for us as we enter into her Chinese words and
her worldwhat matters to her. We begin with
her own words (as translated by SJW):
Client: Because my husband does not have
job, I let him cook. But I also become lazier. I
used to live with my mother-in-law in Taiwan.
At that time, I was under more pressure but its
easier to kill the time. Now my business does
not go well, its much harder to kill the time.
In supervision:
AK: I am interested in the words and meaning
of killing the time.
SJW: In Chinese, it is pronounced da fa. Da
means beat up, fa means releasing. Fa is how
you use your time. Oftentimes it means one may
not have to plan how to spend the time. This
client wanted to be able to use her time well but
did not know how to use her time in a good
way.
AK: So killing the time is more how she can
manage her time positively. Its not like she did
not want to do things.
SJW: Exactly. What word would people use for
this meaning here?
AK: Probably, passing the time, going with the
flow.
In other words, what could easily have been a
misunderstanding herethat by killing the
time the woman meant wasting time, get-
ting through it somehow, rather than being
fully engaged, or captivated by her taskswas
brought to light. It would have been easy for a
supervisor to see the Chinese woman, and her
relations to her husband, in a completely wrong
light.
Later Co-Reflections
SJW: I was struck by how Arlene approached
the translated words. She did not assume she
knew the meaning of killing the time. Instead,
she asked curious questions to invite me to re-
flect on what does it mean and shift thinking in
between Chinese and English. Its so easy to
think from our point of view and risk patholo-
gizing our client. This is a powerful lesson for
me and I need to sense words even with more
humility and curiosity because it allows me to
better enter into my clients world and help my
client based on her world view, not upon mine.
AK: We notice how a short phrase can be
strikingfait invites a whole world of mean-
ingfaand we want to know what that world is.
For this client a sign of wanting to feel better
would be that she could kill the timeshe
would then be able to go with the flow, let
things happen, go along with her energies. By
entering into the words and worlds them-
selves, I was afforded an opportunity to learn of
the different aspects of words and phrases in
Chinese from the characters that form them, a
kind of invitation to enter into spaces of possi-
bility, a sense of wonder in learning the subtle
nuances of words that can too often be taken
for granted. In navigating these different worlds,
we make visible what we can learn from each
other; and become aware of what matters most
for each of us. It asks us to become aware of
another world, point of view, culturea particu-
lar kind of answerability that makes us aware of
what is at stake for each of us in this emerging
3
local moral world (Kleinman, 1995) between
us and with our clients.
And SJW not only became my guide, but she
went on to become aware of aspects of her
own language that she herself had taken for
granted. As she said, If you were a Chinese
speaker these questions may not be asked.
And she then went on to be struck by seeing
what had been a familiar word in a new way.
This space of engagement is not just about
Chinese and English, or professional discourse
and lived experience, but about the richness of
daring to enter into very different worlds with
another person. What is at stake for clinicians in
training whose first language is not English,
whose lived experience is divided between (at
least) two different cultural worlds? A whole
world of experience can be kept in the back-
ground, in learning a professional practice. Not
only listening to their voicesbut what is at
stake for them as they navigate between very
different worlds, the professional world and,
their own local cultures, their own languages.
Conclusion
We write this paper as an invitation to dialogue
and exchange on what we have found to be
critical issues in the process of multicultural
supervision. We have experienced the process
of Ethnographic Participatory Supervision as
one way in which to conduct bilingual supervi-
sion. For SJW, a bilingual clinician, the process
has been striking and has brought out more of
herself as a Chinese clinician who wants to
share her personal and professional experiences
with the readers. As AK commented: Its like
two languages, two cultures play and mingle
with each other. The question now is how we
can invite bilingual clinicians to bring forward
more of who they are, of their world, thus to
enrich our knowledge in the field of supervision
from native and local points of view; how can
we play some more with each other? For SJW,
this collaborative and generative process has
been transformatory; something that she has
not experienced from the textbooks. Even now
she is still touched by it and believes it will stay
with her throughout her life.
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Shi-Jiuan Wu, PhD, is an AAMFT Clinical Member
and Approved Supervisor in Greenville, North Caro-
lina.
Arlene Katz, EdD, is an AAMFT Clinical Member
and Approved Supervisor in Cambridge, Massachusetts.