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 context. (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 electrical 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 airlocks prevents the doors from being flung open all at once. (Sant, 1997, p. 111) An Invitation This article is written to introduce a way of supervision for bilingual clinicians who are practicing therapy in their local language and necessarily are having to navigate between their local language and English. For one of us (SJW), a Chinese clinician practicing therapy in an English 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 supervisor (AK), she was able to articulate these concerns in ways which made sense to her. From SJWs perspective, the overall concern of bilingual 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 invited to speak about their cultural experiences 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. Together, we felt that in the local world we were building together, we could draw on both the Chinese and the Western worlds (Katz & Shotter, 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 Supervision. Although it resonates with and builds on some of the ideas of collaborative language system (Anderson & Goolishian, 1988) and reflecting 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 addresses 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 documented and reflected on before her ethnographically sensitive supervision with AMK. 2. These reflecting notes were brought to supervision 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 supervision. 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 dialogues) 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 experiences: 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 definitely want to give it a try after so many years of losing my usage of my mother language in supervision. Later co-reflections SJW: I was totally shocked when my supervisor 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 wonderful 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 immediate sense of what matters and what is mean-

ingful can get invited. There is a difference between 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 supervision solely in a dominant language settingis that all the nuances, sounds, local phrases, sensations 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, getting 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 reflect 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 pathologizing 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 meaningfaand 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 themselves, 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 possibility, 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 particular kind of answerability that makes us aware of what is at stake for each of us in this emerging

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 background, 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 supervision. 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. References Andersen. T. (1991). The reflecting team. New York, NY: W.W. Norton. Anderson, H., & Goolishian, H. (1988). Human systems as linguistic systems: Evolving ideas about the implications for theory and practice. Family Process, 27, 371-393. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. In M. Holquist, (Ed.), Translated by C. Emerson & M. Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Katz A. M., & Shorter, J. (1996). Hearing the patients voice: Toward a social poetics in diagnostic interviews. Social Science and Medicine, 43(6), 919-931. Katz, A. M., Siegel, B. S., & Rappo, P. (1997). Reflections from a collaborative pediatric mentorship program: Building a community of resources. Ambulatory Child Health, 3, 101-112. Kleinman, A. (1995). Writing at the Margins: Discourse between anthropology and medicine. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Sant, L. (1997). Lingua Franca. Granta, 59, 99111. Shorter, J., & Katz, A. M. (1996). Living moments in dialogical exchanges. In V. Hansen (Ed.), Dialog og Refleksjon: Festchrift for Professor Tom Andersens 60th birthday. Shi-Jiuan Wu, PhD, is an AAMFT Clinical Member and Approved Supervisor in Greenville, North Carolina. Arlene Katz, EdD, is an AAMFT Clinical Member and Approved Supervisor in Cambridge, Massachusetts.