Notes on the report

Abstract

The report is an important tool in the clinical psychology profession; it can be described as the necessary complement of the relational experience characterising and underlying the clinical psychology profession; it is an essential practice in pursuing the goals the profession sets itself. There is no clinical psychology profession that is not relationship-based, but for the purpose of making sense of the professional relationship, it must be completed with the report. The report, in other words, is the practice required for ‘thinking’ the emotions involved in the psychological relationship.
The report that we are talking about concerns the relationship between the clinical psychologist and the interlocutor of the clinical psychology intervention. 
Reporting therefore means using categories that refer to the relationship, in order to think of the emotions in the relationship and to speak about the relationship itself in terms of specific goals. In the sense in which we use it, the report does not concern the other, his/her psychopathological features or his/her behavioural modes in the relationship with the psychologist. It is very important to distinguish between a report concerning the other, which could be said to resemble what is written in the medical record of medical practice, and the report that concerns the relationship characterising the clinical psychology intervention.
The key words in discussing the report for us are therefore: relationship, categories, goals, emotions, thinking, talking about.