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While it is usual to speak of supervising a PhD thesis, the author of this article prefers to use the expression supporting the completion of a thesis. As such, in this article she explains the meaning she attributes to the notion of support. The author discusses how she learned to be a thesis supporter through experience, and details the practical arrangements of such a role. She suggests that each adventure with a doctoral student supposes a meeting accompanied by a form of departure contract that includes, above all, the acceptance of an elaborative work around the psychic movements brought up by the progress of the work. The implications of this are significant, in the context of a clinical thesis with a psychoanalytic orientation. The supporter then becomes the witness to the doctoral student’s metamorphosis into a researcher, while assuming for a time the role of transformational object—as described by Christopher Bollas—before arriving at transitional methods of support.