Inside the oracle's chamber : the experience of counselling supervision in a Maltese context

Abstract

This qualitative work explores the experiences of counselling supervisors in Malta, who work without supportive structures in a very small living space and within a relatively small population, engaged in trying to live harmoniously in the shadows of both western materialism as well as traditional Catholicism. In this study I used a bricolage of enquiry and data analysis based on heuristic and narrative methods. These included unstructured group interviews together with the account of my reflexive process and narrative analysis throughout the whole work. The work also includes a literature review. In this work, I constantly try to search for meaning and understanding through the integration of the researcher's tools combined with tacit knowing and accurate understanding of the context. The collaborative nature of the work is manifested by the representation of the research participants' 'voices' and 'stories' set against a Maltese background. Due to the circumstances arising from the context, ethical issues involving anonymity and confidentiality were thoroughly discussed and agreed upon with the research participants. My multiple roles as a researcher, counsellor and supervisor are constantly present throughout this work. This work is intended to start an informing process on counselling supervision in Malta. It does not draw any specific conclusions but one recommendation that the research participants agreed upon is the drawing up of a structure that supports and informs Maltese counselling supervisors bearing in mind and respecting their contextual background.