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"Fourth [[analysis]]" (l'[[analyse ]] quatrième), a contribution of the [[French ]] Fourth Group, or OPLF (French-[[Language ]] [[Psychoanalytical ]] Organization), is a new approach to the part of [[analytic ]] [[training ]] traditionally known in [[psychoanalytic ]] societies as "[[control]]" or "supervised" analysis. "Thus fourth analysis is in the first [[place ]] a [[theory ]] of the control analysis and of the [[conditions ]] of supervision — a theory never outlined until now — that takes into account the entire group of [[figures ]] and persons involved in it, as well as their [[visible ]] and hidden interactions" (Topique, 1983). The term "fourth" refers not only to the Fourth Group itself, but also to the [[number ]] of protagonists, namely, the [[analysand]], the [[analyst]], the analyst's analyst, and the analyst who carries out the fourth analysis.

The term fourth analysis did not appear in the Fourth Group's "Principles and Modalities of Functioning" (or "Blue Book" [1969]), even though the [[idea ]] of a "multi-referential" analysis effectively prefigured it. Such a multi-referential analysis, it was felt, was an adequate characterization of a key [[moment ]] of analytic training, always assuring that training was not to be reduced to some kind of academic "curriculum." "Indeed, as soon as the candidate takes on his or her first [[patient]], it is no longer the didactic contract, but also the [[clinical ]] [[experience]], with all its unknowns, that regulates the relation of the [[subject ]] to the [[unconscious]]. Thus the patient, who is only spoken of indirectly, confronts [[three ]] [[analysts ]] with the partiality (in both senses) of their [[knowledge]]: the novice, who is striving towards [[mastery]], but also the supervisor and the didactician" (Topique, 1969). It is notable that these were still the very [[terms ]] that the Fourth Group would later question, specifically the term supervisor, which is replaced by fourth analyst, and didactician, which would become "the analyst of the analyst".

Stress on the multi-referential serves in the first place to highlight and to clarify the harmful effects specific to this [[plurality ]] when it is not recognized as such. For example, playing the didactician and the supervisor off against each [[other]], or making what one expects from the patient dependent on what one might [[want ]] to hear or on what one thinks the supervisor wants to hear. Hence the [[formula ]] that gave [[birth ]] to the term fourth analysis: "There are three chairs and a fourth unconscious, which language does not express fully in known dialects" (Topique, 1969).

At the same [[time]], the multi-referentiality specific to fourth analysis is not limited to it, which leads to the [[necessity ]] of organizing "interanalytic sessions" with other analysts of the Fourth Group and possibly analysts from other societies. "The exemplary [[character ]] of this four-term [[situation ]] does not exhaust the diversity of [[third]]-party references. The candidate must be able, according to his or her own analytical, [[theoretical]], and clinical [[progress]], to organize in due course debates of variable lengths with other analysts" (Topique, 1969).

In the [[supplement ]] to the "Blue Book" produced by the Fourth Group's 1970 congress, dedicated mainly to the [[notion ]] of the "didactic effect," the term fourth analysis is defined as follows: "The [[discipline ]] of fourth analysis based on multi-referentiality implies access to the conditions that make the didactic [[affect ]] possible: not just some regulatory [[mechanism ]] designed to facilitate experimentation, scholarship, or initiation, but what may be called a [[topography]]....To become an analyst is to gain access to this tetra-dimensionality of [[Freudian ]] training as a [[process]]" (Topique, 1971).

This points up the important idea that the didactic effect is constructed in a [[dialectical ]] movement made possible by the shift from a [[dual ]] relation to a fourfold one. The risk of a major [[alienation]], that is, alienation in knowledge, can thus be counteracted and the didactic effect is defined as never [[being ]] the direct consequence of the transmission of knowledge.

In 1979, Jean-[[Paul ]] Valabrega, who had participated in drafting the "Blue Book" in 1969 and 1970, undertook a more thoroughgoing theorization of fourth analysis (Valabrega, 1979), which he defined as a "theory of supervision." He set out "to better delimit the 'analytic [[material]]' itself and above all to prevent its potential [[loss]], to insure as much as possible against its unintended erasure" (Topique, 1983).

The [[principle ]] of the fourth analysis has not been modified further. On the other hand, it has been integrated into the greater aim of emphasizing the crucial consideration of the [[transference ]] and [[counter-transference]]. The [[work ]] being carried out on the analysis of the analyst on the basis of fourth analysis allows for, or at least contributes to, a limitation of counter-transferential effects in the [[treatment]], notably the deafness towards the analysand that comes [[about ]] when [[listening ]] to oneself and not the other overwhelms the analyst's [[psychic ]] [[space]].

To reopen and to reinstitute, without ever taking as given what must be perceived as a process, is in fact the [[ideal ]] not only of analytic training, but also of analytic [[practice]], including that of established analysts. The [[existence]], and even the necessity, of interanalytic sessions that bring several analysts face to face around a [[trainee ]] constitutes a [[test ]] of each one's clinical practice; and, at least in principle, it represents an abiding recommendation for every analyst after his or her accreditation. Fourth analysis and interactive sessions, by virtue of their very stringency, are an effective response to what [[Freud ]] (1937c) said in "[[Analysis Terminable and Interminable]]" about the necessity of the analyst's putting his or her own analysis to work.

* [[France]]* Supervised analysis (control [[case]])* Training the [[psychoanalyst]]