Supervision plays a vital role in psychoanalytic training and clinical practice. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, supervision is best understood as what Dries Dulsster and Stijn Vanheule (2019) call a process of super-audition—a second hearing that opens the analyst to what may have been missed in the analysand’s speech. This second hearing helps the analyst resist the temptation to believe she has things figured out, and instead loosens the identification with the role of the subject-supposed-to-know. In this way, the analyst increases her capacity to listen to language beyond the symbolic (or meaning)- through slips, repetitions, and unexpected turns of phrase. And to cultivate a sensitivity to speech as a creative act that reveals a subject’s divided position.
Supervision also supports the analyst in attending to the structural nature of the unconscious—its logic, its repetitions, and the particular circuits of jouissance that animate the analysand’s speech and symptoms. By bringing these patterns into focus, it can help loosen the grip of fixed positions. This, in turn, allows the analyst to maintain a view of the larger arc of the work and sustains an orientation toward structural change over time.
From a Lacanian point of view, the position of the analyst is not one of expertise or authority, but of sustained ethical orientation toward the unconscious. Central to this is what Lacan called the ethics of the analyst’s desire—a desire that is not aimed at knowledge or mastery, but rather at allowing the analysand’s own desire to emerge. The analyst’s desire is for the work itself. Supervision supports the analyst in holding onto this ethical position, especially when clinical work provokes anxiety, doubt, or the temptation to resolve ambiguity too quickly. Because the position of the analyst is not fixed but must be continually reconstituted in relation to each treatment, supervision becomes a vital part of one’s ongoing formation—an effort to remain oriented toward what cannot be predicted, managed, or fully understood.
Consultation to Other Approaches or Single Cases
A consultation is valuable whether one is working as a lacanian or in from another theoretical school. A Lacanian consultation offers a fresh perspective grounded in the structure of language and the logic of the unconscious. This often parkss creative insight within the clinician’s own theoretical frame, whether self psychology, or relational or intersubjective theories, for example. Clinicians frequently find themselves making fuller, more nuanced use of their existing conceptual understandings and techniques.
Although a short-term consultation differs from ongoing supervision, the orientation remains consistent: to listen together in a way that may bring to light what escapes immediate understanding. In line with Lacanian ethics, the goal is not to resolve, but to sustain the analytic process—and more importantly, the analyst’s desire—by staying open to what cannot be fully known or mastered, while deepening one’s relation to their own lack. Ultimately, it is the analyst’s position of lack that opens space for the analysand’s own world and sense of self to emerge.