Counseling Center

Interns: How Individual Supervisors Are Assigned

During the intern orientation period early in August, all licensed staff (generally 6-8 people) participate in a group meeting with the new interns. During this meeting, prospective supervisors give brief presentations, focusing on their theoretical orientations, clinical specializations, and their styles and expectations as supervisors. Following this meeting, new interns have a chance to talk individually with potential supervisors in order to ask questions and to get to know them better.

Interns are then asked to rank order their top five choices of supervisors. The Training Director assigns two supervisors to each intern from these lists. Our expectation is that the intern will divide his/her caseload evenly between these two supervisors.

Midway through the internship year, interns are asked to re-rank their preferences. They are encouraged to keep one of their two supervisors for the entire year so that someone on staff is aware of their growth across the entire internship experience. Interns are also encouraged to change their second supervisor, in order to have a breadth of supervisory experience and to insure a variety of perspectives.

Training Staff

On this page, the training staff introduce themselves, their theoretical orientations, client populations of special interest, and supervision styles. We asked each training staff member to answer the following questions:

What is your theoretical orientation?
Which client issues/populations do you work with frequently?
Which client issues don't you work with?
How do you conduct supervision?

Training Staff Members

Jaime Clark, Ph.D.

Holly Cormier, Ph.D.

Jean Cunningham, Ph.D.

Roy Joy, Ph.D.

Don Mullison Ph.D.

Rosemary E. Simmons, Ph.D.

Jaime Clark, Ph.D., Director of Training/Assistant Director

Theoretical Orientation: My theoretical orientation is best described as an integration of psychodynamic, interpersonal, and dialectical-behavioral conceptual approaches to psychotherapy. More specifically, I tend to conceptualize clients from psychodynamic and interpersonal perspectives while using many interventions from DBT and interpersonal process models. I believe that early relationships within the family of origin have a strong impact on personality and interpersonal development and provide insight into current relationships and patterns of behavior. I see the client-therapist relationship as providing the foundation for therapeutic work and I will attend to this throughout the therapeutic process. I also like to look at each individual through a multicultural lens, taking into consideration their unique experience and culture in order to increase my understanding of their circumstance.
Client Issues/Populations: While I like working with a diverse caseload of clients presenting with a variety of Axis I and Axis II diagnoses, I am particularly interested in working with trauma, impulse control disorders, interpersonal relationship difficulties, eating disorders, and chronic mental health difficulties. I coordinate the DBT program at the counseling center and typically work with a caseload of clients who are a part of the DBT program. I also have research, assessment, and clinical experience working with student-athletes and students who have ADHD or learning difficulties. Although I work with clients who use drugs and alcohol as a means to cope with various traumas, I do not typically work with clients who have substance abuse as their primary presenting issue.
Supervision: Providing supervision is one of my favorite things I do and I find it to be a refreshing and tremendously rewarding process for myself and my trainees. Similar to my approach to therapy, my initial focus is on the supervisor-supervisee relationship. Without a strong and collaborative relationship, there is not enough safety and comfort for true learning to take place. I want my supervisees to feel safe making mistakes, taking risks, exploring transference/countertransference, expressing vulnerabilities, and sharing triumphs.
I believe that supervisors need to meet supervisees where they are at, so I will first want to hear from you about what you see as your present needs and interests and what your goals are for your internship year. In addition to skill development, I think the internship year is a time where interns need to focus on their professional identity and transitioning into the role of a psychologist. Interns have spent many years taking on the role of trainee and I want to aid them in the transition from student to professional in a way that they feel confident to apply for jobs at the end of the internship year.
I believe that one of my strengths as a supervisor is my ability to help interns become more confident in their theoretical orientation, while pushing them to broaden their intervention tools. I enjoy watching tapes both on my own and with the trainee in supervision, but do not want this to be an anxiety provoking experience. In order to identify interactional patterns and explore and work with client affect, I like to have us both stop the tape in sections where we observe these processes and I see the trainee as the expert of his/her experience in the therapy room. My goal is not to change the way a trainee sees clients, but to help them process and explore their reactions to clients in a way that is useful in therapy. I value looking at relationship dynamics, which sometimes means looking at ourselves as well as our clients to examine parallel processes. I am open to and welcoming of supervisee feedback and strive to mold a supervision experience that meets the intern’s training goals for his/her internship year.

Holly Cormier, Ph.D., Staff Psychologist/EDOP Coordinator

I first became licensed as a psychologist in the province of Ontario. I obtained an undergraduate honors degree in experimental psychology, a master’s degree in zoology, and a second master’s degree and a doctoral degree in counseling psychology. My graduate degrees in counseling psychology were received in a setting in which an integrationist approach to theory and practice was nurtured and valued. I continue to embrace this viewpoint in my clinical practice and in my approach to training. Within my integrationist frame, I identify strongly as a feminist therapist. Laura Brown, Judith Worell, Ellyn Kaschak, and Jean Baker Miller are just a few of the individuals in the field of feminist psychology that influence my work. The description of my theoretical orientation would be incomplete if I did not mention psychodynamic theory. Self psychology and object relations theory influence my approach to how I conceptualize various clinical concerns and presentations.
I enjoy working with a variety of presenting issues and concerns in therapy. I am especially interested in working with disordered eating, trauma, and struggles with self and identity that go beyond typical developmental/life stages. I work hard to help individuals explore the context of their experiences, increase insight, and initiate change. I am particularly interested in working with women on issues that appear to disproportionately affect them in comparison to men.
I am an active member of the supervisory staff at the Counseling Center. I enjoy providing both individual and group supervision. My approach to supervision is very much a developmental one. Together, with my supervisee, we assess strengths and growth edges. I work closely with supervisees, encourage transparency in supervision as well as model it myself. As part of this process, I use examples and anecdotes from my own work with clients and experiences as a trainee that are geared toward helping trainees feel comfortable and safe to fully engage in supervision. My feminist values and training are very much a part of how I conduct supervision. I want my supervisee to feel respected, valued, trusted, and engaged in the supervisory process. Overall, I try to create a warm and inviting environment for my supervisees. It is my belief that without such an environment, growth will be limited at best.

Jean Cunningham, Ph.D. , Chief Psychologist/Assistant Director

My major theoretical orientation is broadly psychodynamic. For me, psychodynamic thinking implies several things: a belief in the importance of early relationships (family of origin); a focus on the importance of the client-therapist relationship as the foundation for therapeutic work, and a generally developmental approach. Although I almost always think about clients in dynamic terms, the developmental part of my orientation alters what I do with them, depending on their needs and capabilities: I practice as an integrationist. I don't believe that there is one right way to do therapy, and I believe that therapy is enriched by having a broad range of possible interventions available. Cognitive and behavioral intervention can be extremely helpful, always in the context of a working alliance with the client. Generally, I believe in being flexible and in individualizing treatment.

I am a clinical psychologist by training, and most of my prior clinical experience was in community mental health. I am the sole graduate of an APA approved internship in a psychoanalytically oriented community mental health center in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Not something you run across every day-- it got approval one year, and then was reorganized out of existence the next.) I spent about nine years as a professor in the graduate clinical psych program here at SIU, and during five years of that time I worked part time at a rural community mental health center, providing direct client services and staff supervision and consultation. I value the opportunity to serve people who have minimal financial resources.

Like most people here, I have a lot of experience working with survivors of abuse, and I co-led the adult women's incest survivor group for several years. I frequently work with clients with severe psychopathology, including psychotic disorders and severe personality disorders. I know a fair amount about psychotropic medications. I have treated many depressed people. Particular groups I feel an affinity for include gay and lesbian clients, and also Asian Americans and Asian international students. I am comfortable supervising nearly any case. Since I am involved in most of the serious emergency cases in the agency, I am comfortable with and stimulated by crisis work.

My supervision style echoes an important principle of my therapy style, which is to meet the person on their own ground. I use a developmental model of supervision. I believe that successful supervision requires a safe, supportive environment, and that is my first concern. I have found that supervisees vary greatly, even at the internship level, in what they need and what they are ready for. Generally, though, interns are working on conceptual issues, and that is work I enjoy.

I enjoy supervision most when the person I am working with approaches it as an opportunity to learn and gain support. I'd like supervision to be a place to bring the toughest, most puzzling clients, as well as a place to enjoy successes. I like to view video tapes weekly, in part because I may see and hear things the supervisee is unaware of and thus can't report to me. This may include things about the client and things about the therapist-client relationship. Early in a supervisory relationship, I want to know where each case is week to week. As the relationship develops, I am ready to have the supervisee focus on a case or two per session, trusting that the rest are OK or I would have been told about it.

The internship year is a transition between practicing under close supervision and getting ready to practice independently. It is also a transition out of the graduate student role and into the independent professional role. I expect to spend supervision time on issues related to this transition. The job search is almost always something I talk with supervisees about, and I try to offer support and practical advice. Given my years as a professor, I can also offer help with dissertations.

Several of the interns I have supervised in the past came to internship with exclusively cognitive behavioral training. They chose to be supervised by me to add a dynamic flavor to their work (or to explore that possibility). We worked on understanding the role of historical issues in the client's current problems, and on affective issues in therapy. These supervisory experiences were fun for me, and I think for the interns as well.

Roy H. Joy, Ph.D., Staff Psychologist/Community Intervention Coordinator

My theoretical orientation is best described as an integration of the psychodynamic, interpersonal, and cognitive-behavioral conceptual approaches to psychotherapy. However, when asked I call myself interpersonal because it best captures how I like to think about clients, my work with them, and the blending of these conceptual traditions.

Client populations that I work with most include individuals (adolescents and adults), couples, and families. As a generalist, I work with a broad spectrum of disorders and client issues. Those that I work with most include depression, anxiety and stress-related disorders, character-personality disorders, all forms of adjustment disorders, separation, loss, and divorce issues, identity problems, sexual abuse perpetration, couple/marital problems and family adjustment issues of all sorts (e.g., sexual dysfunction, adultery, blended family issues, parent-adolescent conflict, severe mental illness of a family member, abuse within the family).

I typically do not work with cases of severe eating disorder, active substance abuse and dependency, and dissociative identity disorders. As for modalities of treatment, I generally do not run psychotherapy groups.

My style of supervision is to work from a developmental approach whereby the supervision begins as more of a mentoring relationship (attending to and focusing on the conceptual/intervention skills/professional development needs of the therapist-in-training). Gradually, over time, my aim is to facilitate the development of a much more collaborative relationship between myself and the supervisee with the supervision itself approximating professional consultation and collaboration between professional colleagues.

Don Mullison, Ph.D., Staff Psychologist/Practicum Coordinator

I am an integrationist with a strong interpersonalist and emotion focused therapy base. Yalom, Teyber, Levenson, and Gustafson provide examples of the kind of interpersonalist approach I draw from. Each of the above understands the importance of relationship and a developmental perspective in doing the kind of work we do. I am also heavily influenced by the Emotion Focused Therapy writings and research of Leslie Greenberg and Susan Johnson. In addition, I pull from several other areas I find important (e.g., systems theory, feminist writings, experiential/gestalt, humanist/existential, DBT, and various cognitive approaches). I believe that the relationship is very important, and thus, attend a great deal to interpersonal process. In doing this, I believe it is also essential to pay very close attention to client affect.
I do a lot of work with clients struggling with relationship issues (e.g., with family, partners, friends, roommates, or people they work with). I see a large number of "survivors", defined broadly to include adult children of alcoholics, physical and/or emotional abuse survivors, and incest survivors - essentially clients from a wide variety of dysfunctional families. Otherwise I am a generalist. While I do a great deal of individual work, I also very much enjoy working with couples and groups. Finally, I enjoy working with students from a variety of diverse backgrounds including racial/ethnic minorities, GLBQ, and international students.
While I have worked with clients dealing with eating disorders with some modest success, I believe there are other staff members who know a good deal more about his population than I do.
Along with doing therapy, providing supervision is one of the most interesting, rewarding, and enjoyable things I do. I like to think that I bring a lot of this interest and energy to supervision in a way that those of you I work with can appreciate and value. If I do get an opportunity to work with you, I will first want to hear about what you see as your present needs and interests. It is important for me to hear about your particular learning style and the kinds of things you are wanting from a supervisor (in addition to things you are, perhaps, not wanting from a supervisor). I will be working to form a collaborative partnership with you offering an environment that is safe, useful, and provides a blend of challenge and support.
I believe that one of my strengths as a supervisor is the ability to focus on process and affect. Identifying interactional patterns and exploring and working with client affect form a large part of the focus I naturally bring to supervision. To do this well, I need to see videotapes so that my feedback can be helpful and specific. I enjoy seeing tapes and will ask that you give me whatever will be the most useful tapes for you to have me review. I value looking at relationship dynamics, which sometimes means looking at ourselves as well as our clients. I hope you will find me open to and welcoming of your feedback. I want to encourage an atmosphere in which you feel safe to learn and explore (and yes, to make mistakes, which are an unavoidable part of learning, providing therapy and life). While I take supervision seriously, I don't believe it has to be grim. I think we can have a great deal of fun, if we allow ourselves to remain curious about what we do. After all, we will be doing some of the most interesting work imaginable.

Rosemary E. Simmons, Ph.D., Director

Rosemary E. Simmons, Ph.D., Director
I was trained from a psychodynamic approach, so how I conceptualize clients is certainly based in this school of thought. I believe that early childhood experiences (both positive and negative) have a good deal of impact on how adults view themselves and others in their world. I went to Virginia Commonwealth University for my internship. I was heavily influenced by their strong group and diversity programs. The group work taught me the importance of the client-therapist relationship and also gave me permission to be more active in sharing my thoughts and feelings about the client and the process with the client. At this point I began integrating psychodynamic and interpersonalist approaches. Therefore, my overall approach is based on relational models, however I use techniques and interventions from various schools of thought including cognitive, behavioral, gestalt, solution-focused, etc.
I have experience with a broad range of Axis I (mainly affective and eating disorders) and II diagnoses and developmental issues. At this point, I primarily work with clients who are survivors of trauma, who engage in self-injurious behavior, and who are chronically suicidal. My work with clients who had diagnoses of PTSD, impulse control disorders, and personality disorders led me to Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). I helped start the DBT program at the SIUC Counseling Center in 1999. DBT focus on mindfulness skills led me to the field of Buddhist psychology. The focus on radical acceptance, impermanence, compassion for self and others, and the “middle way” has been very useful in my own life and my clients. Lastly, a fair amount of my caseload consists of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered clients who are presenting with a variety of issues. I receive these referrals due to my networking with GLBT student groups, the GLBT Resource Center, and people knowing I am a lesbian.
I have had little training in working with couples so I do not see couples clients and I have not engaged in the provision of formal assessment and report writing for a long time so I no longer provide that service either.
I take a developmental approach to supervision. I believe counselors in training work through a variety of tasks throughout their development. I match what I do as a supervisor with the supervisee's needs. For interns, that means I talk with them very directly about their current goals within individual psychotherapy. In addition to skill development, I think the internship year is a time where interns integrate their academic work, clinical experience and their own personality into their identity as a psychologist and in “finding their voice”. What I mean by this is allowing yourself to be consistently who you are no matter if you are in session with a client, presenting a workshop or having lunch with a friend. This work is too draining if you have to create a different persona every time you go to work.
How does this translate to what I do? Good question. First of all I work hard at creating a safe and supportive environment where you can truly be yourself and feel comfortable enough to be gently challenged. I want to give you plenty of space to grow and explore while at the same time give you concrete suggestions regarding conceptualizations and/or interventions when you ask. I view digital recordings, read case notes, and expect you to bring in the agenda for the supervision session. I will ask you about professional identity issues such as career goals, dissertation progress, and job search. I also view supervision as a place to vent when you are frustrated with a client, brag when you are proud of yourself or your client, and be saddened or angered about the details of some of you clients' lives. Lastly, I want us to be able to create an atmosphere and negotiate a relationship where you can get what you need this year.

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