Confidentiality in Supervision – Ellen A. Sparer

What happens when the analytic setting—built on confidentiality and silence—meets the institutional demands of psychoanalytic training? Can the frame of supervision truly preserve the integrity of the analytic pact, or does it inevitably put it at risk?

In this episode, Ellen Sparer explores a central paradox in psychoanalytic formation: the tension between the confidentiality of analytic work and the structural requirements of supervision. Drawing from her experience at the Paris Psychoanalytic Institute, she asks whether supervision risks undermining the very foundation of the analytic situation—what Freud, in An Outline of Psychoanalysis, described as a pact in which “the patient’s sick ego promises us the most complete candour…” while “we, on the other hand, assure him of the strictest discretion.”

Through reflections on André Green, José Bleger, and Freud’s concept of disavowal, Sparer examines what she calls a “noisy contradiction”—a situation in which the analyst-in-formation becomes both observer and observed, and where the silence essential to the analytic space is disturbed by institutional structure. She invites us to consider the Institute’s role as a symbolic third—present, structuring, yet potentially unsettling—and to ask whether we can live with this paradox without disavowing its presence.

Rather than resolving the contradiction, this episode engages with it directly, as Ellen Sparer offers a nuanced and courageous inquiry into a space of ethical tension, institutional inheritance, and potential transformation at the core of analytic formation.

 

Ellen Sparer is a training analyst at the Paris Psychoanalytic Society and former Director of the Paris Institute of Psychoanalysis, a role she held until March 2025. She has served as co-chair of the Applicant Societies Committee of the IPA, where she contributed to the evaluation of emerging psychoanalytic groups seeking IPA recognition. She is also an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, where she’s part of the Education Section, and a scientific advisor for the Jahrbuch of Psychoanalysis. From 2009 to 2019, she was on the editorial board of the Revue Française de Psychanalyse. Most recently, she was elected to the IPA Board as a European representative.

Her scientific work and publications focus on the unconscious ego, supervision, training, the frame, and ethics. She has also written on countertransference phenomena, including the function of the analyst’s dream in the treatment process.

 

This Podcast Series, published by the International Psychoanalytical Association, is part of the activities of the IPA Communication Committee and is produced by the IPA Podcast Editorial Team.

Co-Editors: Gaetano Pellegrini and Nicolle Zapien.

Editing and Post-Production: Massimiliano Guerrieri.