The authors review some of the legal, ethical, and technical problems in supervised psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. They conclude that while it is ethically necessary to obtain the patient's permission to consult a supervisor, the patient's knowledge that a supervisor is involved in the case may lead to an unanalyzable distortion of the therapeutic relationship. To resolve this conflict, they propose that the psychoanalyst routinely obtain written permission for future consultation at the very outset of treatment and not allude to it thereafter. This technique would, the authors believe, allow any questions the patient raises about consultation in the course of treatment to be addressed interpretatively.