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The main part of this book consists of eighteen recorded transcriptions of sessions from a five-year span of the supervision of a candidate at the beginning of her training. The sessions are presented in consecutive pairs selected at random intervals apart from number 68, which stands alone, and the three final sessions as the analysis is terminated. Each transcript is followed by the supervisor's summary and comments. This core section is preceded by an introduction and summary of literature and also a chapter previously published as a separate paper, ‘Aspects of the supervisory process’. It is followed by a contribution from the candidate, Dr Mary Dick.
Dewald perceives psychoanalytic supervision as ‘a process of interaction with an unfolding sequence of experience in any single case of candidate—supervisor pairing’. Although he attempts to pin down this process under goals of supervision and educational principles he is also attentive to unconscious factors in the candidate, regression as well as progression, the reactivation of conflicts, challenges to loyalties and previous identifications, and the candidate's transference to the supervisor.
Thus we are permitted to ‘overhear’ the recorded sessions. It may take an English eye and ear some time to appreciate the intonations and the idioms. I found myself tripped from time to time by such endearing phrases as ‘out to lunch’, i.e., not paying attention. And, as is only to be expected for an outsider overhearing excerpts from an ongoing relationship, the sequence is not always clear.
The sessions illustrate the teaching and learning of classical psychoanalytic concepts. There is a useful passage on the interpretation of resistance before content. This theme recurs in the first half of the recorded sessions and then fades, just as the supervisor's interventions diminish in number and length as the relationship progresses from the didactic to the consultative. The patient's transference is under scrutiny throughout; the