ABSTRACT
Buckminster Fuller's description of consciousness as three-and fourfold can help open up the meaning of `dif®cult'. Supervision gives a privileged view of an intimate relationship. How can we create a safe space, like a ring for diamonds, for an intimate relationship which is threefold (patient, therapist and supervisor) and fourfold (patient, therapist, supervisor and collective)? Who creates the idea of dif®cult? Does it mean predicament? Predicaments in therapy may evoke negative judgements; they ask for discernment, for time and space within which meanings can clarify. Maybe dif®cult means hard to discern? The commonest causes are being in a hurry, having guilty attachments to `theory', having a goal in mind, and imagining we are supposed to know what is going on.
