This commentary addresses two points of divergence with Bemister and Dobson's (2011, 2012) recommended update in record keeping. In the first place, it is very difficult to conceive of proper record keeping practices which would be universally relevant across the many and qualitatively different professional activities undertaken by clinical psychologists. It can be argued that internally coherent ethical guidelines can and should be developed for each area of practice. The second point has to do with Bemister & Dobson's handling of the confidentiality issue. Much of their advice about the advisability of psychologists' familiarizing themselves with privacy regulators, third party danger requirements, and other legal limits to confidentiality and the consequent need to inform patients about these limits and abide by them becomes largely irrelevant if the commitment to confidentiality is granted as an essential part of the ethical framework of psychotherapeutic work and not a criteria to be negotiated or modified by external considerations. The collective weakness in professional autonomy implicitly assumed by Bemister & Dobson's guidelines will continue to allow the many instances where psychologists are not masters of their professional integrity.Keywords: confidentiality, record-keeping, professional autonomy, clinical practice, ethicsLimited space prevents me from addressing the many sensible suggestions made by Bemister and Dobson (2011, 2012) in their recommended update in record keeping. Instead, I will concentrate on two caveats of consequence derived from an intensive reflection on confidentiality in the psychoanalytic community (Cordess, 2000; Garvey & Layton, 2004; Koggel, Furlong, & Levin, 2003; Levin, Furlong, & O'Neil, 2003). These reflections naturally brought to attention many - though not all - of the record-keeping considerations brought up by Bemister and Dobson, and for that reason, because they have not been referenced so far, it is pertinent to contribute them to this valuable exchange.The first point to be made, which has partially been made by Mills (2012), is that it is very difficult to conceive of proper record-keeping practices that would be universally relevant across the many and qualitatively different professional activities undertaken by clinical psychologists. I am trying to bring up for explicit scrutiny the passing mention by Bemister and Dobson (2012) that differences with Mills also be considered matters of professional opinion (p. 144). Mills has good grounds for questioning the unnuanced applicability of a number of their recommendations without taking into account the clinical context of his line of practice. For similar reasons having to do with the specialized setting of their work, mental health professionals working as experts before the courts have instituted their own guidelines for informed consent (Appelbaum, 1997). In judging the points that will be made in this article, the reader is asked to keep in mind that they have derived specifically from concerns about psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy and psychoanalysis offered in private settings, though they may have some relevance to practitioners of other kinds of psychotherapy and in other settings. The goal of treatment, the intersubjective field instituted in the relationship, the ethical stance taken toward third-party involvement, the clinical theory of therapeutic evolution, the attention paid to the expressions of transference and countertransference, the role of the frame itself as part of the treatment, and the postulation of universal unconscious processes are often understood in distinct ways by clinicians of disparate theoretical orientation and training. Both Bemister and Dobson and Mills seem to agree that ethics should not be divorced from sound clinical principles; the problem is that we do not all do the same kind of work, nor do we theorize our work in the same manner. …