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I am in accord with the fundamental theme of these two excellent articles: Psychoanalytic supervision cannot avoid addressing emotional factors that emerge both in the treatment and within the supervisory relationship. More than anything, psychoanalysis is an emotional experience between two people. Learning to become an analyst is inevitably both a cognitive and affective experience. Though it is often not easy for a supervisor to know when to emphasize one or the other, few would disagree that both are an essential part of a learning experience in this profession. Our two authors underscore this position with eloquence, clarity, and vulnerability.
Both writers make critical reference to perspectives on supervision that advocate the avoidance of examination of either or both, countertransference and interactional problems between supervisor and supervisee. A contrast is drawn between a one-person model, wherein the supervisor is an absolute authority and the supervisee, a passive learner; and a two-person model, characterized by a wider breadth of mutual engagement. I believe that there is very little left of the former position in contemporary psychoanalysis of all schools. There are, of course, individual differences among supervisors with regard to how much each is inclined to examine the range of affective and interactional experience in the supervisory process.
Regardless of where one falls on this continuum, for me there is no conflict about supervision being first and foremost an educational enterprise. I see no controversy between teaching and treating—I am clearly in the teaching camp. Though it is sometimes difficult to maintain this boundary, it is important for me to keep a clear aim in mind. My aim in psychoanalytic therapy is character change in a direction approximating