The article examines the activity of writing case-notes. For this purpose, case-notes
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practitioners and their clients. The primary focus is on psychotherapy notes,
written for private use. It suggests that note writing is potentially a lively
addition to the dialogue within the therapy room, an essential part of the unique
relationship that grows between practitioner and client. In particular, it looks at
the possibilities of representing intersubjectivity, the third voice, emerging from
the dialogue between two subjectivities, in ways that forward both theoretical
understanding and the therapeutic endeavour. It will argue that serious engagement
with case-notes must of necessity tackle questions of voice, speaking rights, a
variety of deafnesses, power, the inscription or oblation of race and gender in
professional discourses, and reclamation of knowledge colonized by patriarchal and
colonial structures of authority. It is feminist in its orientation. It speaks from
a postcolonial African context, and a psychoanalytic approach, and draws on
psychotherapy experience saturated with those foundational identities.
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