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In this paper I will discuss the position of the supervisor with respect to the candidate in supervision. It is a delicate position, for the supervision creates a complex relational network involving not only the supervisor and the candidate in supervision, but also the candidate's analysand, and often the analyst of the candidate in supervision. This
extensive relational network raises several important questions: How do we maintain our position as supervisors? How do we transmit analysis as opposed to teaching it? How do we avoid rivalry with the candidate's analyst? And, finally, how do we avoid the snares of transference and countertransference?
In more favorable cases, thanks to the continuous interplay of projections and introjections between the different protagonists involved in the supervision, the candidate in supervision gradually develops a personal way of being a psychoanalyst through a process of introjective identification with the supervisor. But sometimes, this type of identification fails and the candidate imitates the person who is believed to be the supervisor rather than identifying with that person. It can also happen that insufficiently elaborated elements of the transference between the candidate-analyst and the analysand force their way into the supervision, and the candidate in supervision acts out in the relationship with the supervisor what he has been unable to verbalize with the analysand. This is what I have called “transference of the transference,” and it is the subject of this paper.
I shall now present a supervision in which this sort of difficulty arose. You will see how we were able to elaborate these problems thanks to the good working alliance which developed between the candidate and myself from the beginning of the supervision.
A woman doctor, Esther, a candidate of our Society and i