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In this paper I would like to reflect on a common aspect of psychoanalytic practice to which little consideration is paid. I am referring to accounts of one or two sessions, to those little slips of paper that I think are to be found in any psychoanalyst's study and which sometimes are put together to form the history of an analysis or a significant part of it. It immediately becomes clear that these documents are particularly important if one remembers that they represent the second — and last — perspective from which the analytic relationship can be understood, the first of course being the analysis itself from the point of view both of the patient and the analyst.
But what scientific status can be granted to these accounts, or more simply how reliable are they? When I began this research, I was perplexed to discover that particulary with regard to the passing on of scientific knowledge, the whole psychoanalytic edifice is founded on a sparse stock of literature, whose textual characteristics have hardly been studied, not even in the most famous case histories. I felt I could find