Editorial

Supervision is an aspect of practice that dates back to the origins of our discipline. In our opening article, Edward Watkins, Michael Ellis, Rima Viliūnienė, Ioana-Eva Cădariu, Loredana-Ileana Vîşcu and Jennifer Callahan explore how the process is agreed between supervisee and supervisor. ‘A written supervision agreement for psychoanalytic supervision?’ gives an overview of the history of the contract or agreement in supervision, and ponders the question of why written, concrete agreements are rarely encountered in psychoanalytic practice. The paper describes the contributions of Max Eitinger, and the important work of Fleming and Benedek in conceptualising the ‘learning alliance’. The authors state their preference for a written, rather than verbal, agreement. They consider the components of such an agreement, its implementation and relevance. They aim to highlight the function of a written agreement in effecting a satisfactory beginning to the supervisory relationship and providing a facilitative framework and anchoring container within which the work can proceed. They describe four components of the agreement: professional disclosure and supervisory description; the supervisee’s rights; the supervisee’s responsibilities; and typical supervision experiences. The authors recognise that a written agreement is not a panacea, but suggest that it can be a potentially helpful tool. In their view, the written supervision agreement has been overlooked in psychoanalytic practice leading them to advocate for it and consider how its use can benefit the psychoanalytic supervision process. They highlight its particular benefits for supervisees in the early stages of their therapist development process, and hope that it might be of benefit to psychoanalytic supervisors as well.

Like supervision, the ‘case study’ is as old as psychoanalysis itself. We currently find ourselves challenged as psychoanalytic practitioners to meet the twin demands of providing clinical exemplificatio