Lacanian perspectives on psychoanalytic supervision

This article presents a Lacanian perspective on supervision within the context of the history of psychoanalytic supervision. Lacan emphasizes the importance of the personal analysis and how supervision, at times, can function as a resistance against the same. Eventually, Lacan concluded that an analyst is authorized by what he called the analyst's synthome and a few other analysts. What allows an analyst to effectively operate with the transference of the analysand is that, because of his/her own analysis, he/she knows that he/she does not know and, therefore, is generally not deceived by the transference to the "subject who is supposed to know". An analysis ends by virtue of the desire of the analyst not to remain in the position of the beloved subject who is supposed to know, and by virtue of the analysand's own "unknown-knowing." The analyst is an ex-analysand that has transformed the jouissance of his/her symptom into an Other jouissance of the synthome.