It may be useful to try to make a formulation of Music', predicament, although no formulation will do justice to the complexity of her life and personality, nor to the attempts of the therapist to work with her As in any aspect of supervision, it will add associations to set alongside the views and knowledge of the therapist. The aim in doing this is to maintain a thoughtful and imaginative engagement with the patient. A formulation also tells us about a person diagnostically, and provides clues about the possible transference configurations that are likely to have to be worked with in the treatment. (Quite frequently it is not possible to make formulations of patients, either because they are too disturbed and fragmented in their inner worlds, or because though not so fragmented their symptoms may stand as highly condensed reactions, not