This book was inspired by two specific events: on the one hand, the release in Italy of Nancy McWilliams' book Psychoanalytic Supervision (McWilliams, 2021), and, on the other hand, a seminar on the same topic organised by Frenis Zero Publishing House in November 2023. Group supervision is the central theme of the chapter that Nancy McWilliams herself contributed to this book. A psychoanalytic supervision group can be formed in many different ways and in many different contexts: in his chapter, Giuseppe Riefolo focuses, in fact, on the discussion of cases in the multi-professional groups of a Mental Health Centre.
Sensitive issues are those related to the unconscious relations that are triggered in the supervision process, and in particular related to the transference-countertransference bind that arises between the patient/supervisee relationship and that of the latter with the supervisor. Of interest, in this book, are the statements made, from a perspective closer to the object relations model, by Donald Metzer in his 1999 interview, and also the comments made in his chapter by Anthony Bass (from a more relational standpoint) referring to his own experience as a supervisor as well as to the work of other authors like Berman (2014) and Sarnat (2014). Finally, a key research issue is the correlation that can be established between the improvement of patients in treatment and the fact that the therapist is undergoing supervision: this question is tackled by Schmolke and Hoffmann in a chapter of this book entitled "Mirror Processes in the Protected Space of Psychoanalytic Supervision".