ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how psychoanalytic supervision has changed over the years, from its beginnings as the intervention of a super-expert in an under-cultured professional equipe, reaching a whole new level of collaboration today between two different professional competences, combining supervision and inter-vision processes with a group dynamics perspective. The request for psychoanalytically oriented intervention and help in the Mental Health Service is usually expressed by one or more members of a professional team who experience some degree of discomfort with their conditions at work. The analysis of the initial request is extremely important, since the reasons for calling on a psychoanalyst to collaborate can vary enormously and can imply very different underlying processes. Understanding the real source and motivation behind a supervision request can be the first, fundamental step for initiating a fruitful collaboration. Supervision can progressively highlight some typical forms of transference, enabling them to be recognized and possibly used in a somewhat conscious way.
