Lessons From a Teacher, Supervisor, Advisor, and Friend

Sara Berns
University of Washington

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sara Berns, Graduate Research Assistant, Center for Clinical Research, 1107 NE 45th Street, Suite 310, Seattle, Washington 98105-4631.
E-mail: sberns@u.washington.edu

"That was the most painful hour of my life."

Those were the first words out of my mouth after my first couple therapy session. For two years, I had put off learning couple therapy. It was why I had wanted to come to the University of Washington to work with Neil in the first place. Here I was, a graduate student of the world-famous Neil Jacobson; what if I ended up to be a horrible couple therapist? And when my time finally came, I could not have hated it more. It was the longest 50 minutes I had ever experienced. The wife cried the whole time, the husband would not speak, and on at least three separate occasions, my mind went completely blank. I sulked into Neil's office for our first supervision session and reluctantly handed over the tape. After a 10 minute self-deprecating preface, we watched the session while I cringed on the couch.

"Excellent. That might have been one of the best first sessions by a therapist I have ever seen," Neil said at the end of the tape.

He went on to tell me exactly what worked, and why, and complimented me on my ability to work with what was, in his opinion, one of the most difficult couples he had ever supervised. He also pointed out what did not work, and why, and validated my feelings on how difficult couple therapy can be. He made me feel confident, capable, and in control. And thus began my development as a couple therapist.

Neil was my couple therapy supervisor, my couple therapy research advisor, and among many other roles, my very good friend. As much as I will always lament not having Neil around to encourage my growth in the area of couple therapy, I am extremely grateful for the four years that I had with him. I want to share some of my memories of Neil as a couple therapy and research supervisor, not only to express my admiration and respect for his abilities in this domain, but also to provide a model for successful training of beginning couple therapists and researchers.

Neil was known for being an incredibly attentive supervisor—I had heard this before he became my own. I had heard that he took copious and very thorough notes of each session, much more so than other supervisors did. With how little time he had, it was amazing how much time he found to commit to supervising. And the rumors were true—he spent two hours per week with me (one hour to watch the tape and one hour to talk about it). Sometimes, he would sit back in his chair with remote in hand, and I would worry that he might begin to drift off. But no, he was always present. He saw everything. He commented on almost every moment, but he made extra sure to comment if it was what he considered to be a "stroke-of-genius" intervention.

Perhaps my fondest memories of supervision are the times when we would be watching a tape and Neil would say, "You should really ask about such-and-such, or say this or that." If I did end up asking about it or saying what he suggested, he would leap out of his chair and clap loudly with excitement. And this was no easy feat—anyone who has seen his crumbling, black La-Z-Boy knows that it was not an easy chair from which to leap. He would lean over to the couch where I was sitting and give me a loud high-five. Then the praising would begin—about what a gifted, natural therapist I am, how he always knew I would be good at this, how he could not wait to brag to people about me. I say all this not to make myself look good but, rather, to illustrate how much Neil believed in making me feel confident and capable. Even beyond that, he wanted me to feel like the best clinician in the world.

After about my fourth session of therapy, I was feeling frustrated by the way I felt like I was playing the part of a couple therapist on a TV show. The session began, and I was no longer Sara Berns, but Dr. Berns, who spouted out terminology and metaphors. Neil told me to be myself—that the philosophy of integrative couple therapy was in me and that my instincts could be trusted. That may sound like obvious advice, but the timing of it and the confidence that it instilled in me made a world of difference. From then on, it has been me in that room—not me playing a therapist.

Neil encouraged the use of humor in therapy. I remember when I was having a problem with a husband who often wore a baseball cap and sunglasses to therapy, even after being repeatedly asked to take them off at every session. When I presented Neil with this issue, he decided he wanted me to take the hat right off the husband's head and put it on mine—backwards, of course. He did not just want me to do this, he begged me to do it. He promised me that it would "lighten things up." But most importantly, he wanted to push me to do things in therapy that I would normally consider "out of the normal realm" of therapist behavior. Be silly. Be lighthearted. Tease a little. Be myself. Watching me do therapy excited him—I would hand over the tape, and I could see the look of excitement as he put the tape in the VCR. With excitement like that, you would think he was putting in a tape of a North Carolina basketball game. He loved to watch me learn and develop as a therapist.

I spent two hours per week with Neil talking about my couple, but the rest of time was spent coordinating a large-scale couple therapy study. I could go on for pages in praise of Neil as an advisor in general, but rather, I will focus on Neil as a couple therapy research advisor. Neil encouraged us to be part of the marital therapy research community. At conferences, he made every effort to introduce me to as many people in the field as possible and to get involved in the couples special interest group. Whereas other researchers had their graduate students "in tow" behind them, Neil always introduced us and referred to us as intellectual equals. I was not just "one of Neil's students;" I was treated as a talented, capable, and influential researcher in my own right. He opened the door to the close-knit and supportive "family" of marital therapy researchers, and he invited me in not as favor to me, but as favor to them: I had something to offer, and he wanted to make sure everyone knew it.

As focused as I was on running our study, Neil also always kept me focused on broad, important areas in the field. For example, in December of 1997, he organized a conference to discuss how researchers view a "successful outcome" of marital therapy. We discussed such political and hotly debated topics as, "When is divorce a positive outcome?" Rather than simply having his students as audience members, he invited each of us to act as a discussant to each of the speakers. I think he did this for several reasons: first, to give us the opportunity to make contact with some very well-known people in the field, but also to show us, and the others there, that we had something important to contribute. Again, we were not just "Neil's students"—we were there to learn from the conference but to enrich it with our presence as well.

I hope what I have written has provided not only a window into my relationship with Neil as a supervisor and research advisor, but also a sense of Neil as a generous, caring, supportive, and loving person. As I continue to grow as a therapist and a researcher, the skills that I learned from Neil will continue to enrich my work, and the confidence I have gained will continue to enrich my life.