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In this fascinating paper Ogden takes us on a journey of exploration into the supervisory relationship. He views this process as a form of ‘guided dreaming’ and his examples all illustrate this vividly. What he weaves through the paper is a rich tapestry which illustrates how the reverie of both the supervisor and supervisee represent a sort of dream-like state in which aspects of the patient's material and their internal world can be conceptualized and explored within and through the supervisory dialogues.
Ogden outlines two key features that he considers are important in supervision. Firstly the ability to ‘dream’ about the patient by both supervisor and supervisee, and that this enables unconscious psychological work to be carried out. In using the term ‘dream’ Ogden is referring to a form of active imagination or reverie in relation to the countertransference feelings and fantasies within the supervisor. The second point he makes is that the analyst ‘dreams up the patient’ (p. 1267) and reflects the fact that the patient who is brought into supervision is a product of the supervisee's communications, thoughts, feelings and fantasies.
Both of these concepts are built on Ogden's use of the work of Searles. Searles was one of the first to recognize the importance of the supervisor's emotional experience and subjective fantasy. Ogden sought out supervision with Searles and he describes the significance of this in relation to the importance of bringing the ‘full depth and breadth of one's emotional response to the work’ (p. 1275).
This is what Ogden goes on to demonstrate in the clinical illustrations that he presents. I found these to be rich, illustrative vignettes which really brought alive Ogden's use of the supervisor's subjective fantasy as well as the processes of guided ‘dreaming’ within the supervisor and the supervisee and of how they illuminate the internal world dynamics and unconscious communication of the patient. All the vignettes clearly demonstrate the