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Let me begin with an anecdote. Though the practice seems different today, as I went through training and for the first twenty or so years after that, I assumed that the analyst does not take notes during a session—just as, as candidates, none of my group (to my knowledge) took notes during sessions with those analysands whom we brought for supervision as control cases or in continuous case seminars. To me, this was just the way things were, and I did not think about it and therefore never questioned it; it made sense that note-taking would interfere with maintaining evenly suspended attention. I still do not take notes, though it is hard to find a supervisee who does not do so, if the patient is on the couch.
But once, I would guess it was about twenty-five years ago, I was at a presentation at the New York Psychoanalytic Society—I do not recall the discussion that led to this—when no less a person than Phyllis Greenacre mentioned that she took notes during sessions. In the course of the next ten minutes of discussion, about a half dozen others raised their hands to speak and, in fact, “confessed” to the same activity. Dr. Greenacre's statement and status allowed them, so to speak, to come out of the closet.
I wonder how many hands will be raised with regard to experiences like the ones I am going to describe in this note—the supervision of former analysands—and what the experience has been with it. It is not much discussed, but I suspect that this is because it is closeted, and not because it is not done. My guess is that it may not be frequent, but that