Parallel Processes in a Training and Supervision Group for Counsellors Working with Adolescent Sex Offenders

This paper discusses four parallel processes in a sex offenders' counsellors training and supervision group. Two of them, feelings of isolation and proclamations of boredom, were similar responses to similar stimuli: the first, to the stigma that adheres both to the sexual offense and to the professional work with the offenders, the second to anxieties that derived from a similar technique used in both groups. The other two involve the counsellors' displacement of feelings they had in and about the offenders' groups to their own training and supervisory groups. Both of these involved issues-responsibility and self-control that are particularly salient in work with sex offenders. The discussion suggests that parallel processes emerge with great frequency in work with sex offenders because of the stresses of the work and the issues that are highlighted in it.