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This paper is an attempt to penetrate to the point where the deepest choices are made by supervisors in their reports on a student. Supervision may be seen as an educational activity confined to objective assessment of theoretical knowledge and therapeutic technique. But is there something beyond this that supervisors look for? Is there a larger truth, and if so, where is it to be found? Truth is complex, alien, and elusive. Perhaps, as Sartre would have it, truth is what one chooses to believe. Then again, from a Winnicott perspective, truth may be what facilitates the emergence of a true self. I invite the reader to consider for himself the question of the larger truth in supervision.
Observations of students in training can provide essential data for a theory of supervision. With this in mind, I will explore one student's history of supervision in psychoanalytic training. I will first present a dream of the student at the time of his graduation in order to give the reader a psycho-dynamic glimpse. Here we may have a clue as to the larger truth for the student graduating after four arduous years of being a therapist, a patient, and a supervisee. This will be followed by a gleaning of supervisory reports during the training period. The former student by now has been a successful psychoanalyst and supervisor for some decades. He will relate his thoughts as he looks back. My own observations will then be given. I thought I would speak from experience rather than refer to the literature on supervision. I will note, however, that my thinking has been influenced by Freud, Khan, Lacan, and Winnicott.
“I walked into a butcher shop. To my surprise, the butcher who greeted me was the Dean of Training. He wore an apron and a friendly smile. He led me into the freezer storage room where one usually finds huge hunks