ABSTRACT
The provision of ongoing supervision, peer supervision, or consultation helps to ensure, among other important functions, reliable access to ethical thinking in analytic practice. The ethical function is a relational function involving the assessment of subjective and intersubjective states. Jung pointed out that it is ubiquitous and hence has a collective dimension, while at the same time being experienced most vividly at the personal level. In psychoanalytic theory, the importance of the negotiation of the Oedipal threesome, that archetypal triad par excellence, constitutes much of the psychoanalytic understanding of developmental achievement. This chapter explores some aspects of the supervisory function in analytic practice in relation to developmental and archetypal perspectives. The provision through supervision of a triangular space in which clinical work with patients can be thought about creates the necessary dimensionality for psychological transformation to occur and has resonance with developmental reality and archetypal truth.
