Contribution to the Discussion on the Analytic Frame

Abstract

Our conception of the analytic frame or setting has changed over the years, partly as a necessary response to the changes in the pace and conditions of modern life, but also as a consequence of our deeper understanding of the analytic relationship and the patients' emotional needs. The shape taken by the setting at any moment of the treatment is a co-construction—partly conscious and partly unconscious—of the pair. However, the manifest setting, its impact on the parties, and its unconscious meanings are also something to be explicitly analyzed during the analytic dialogue. I present a brief clinical vignette of an analysis in which the changes in the setting, determined by external factors, later revealed their unconscious relational meaning. The various stages of this treatment were (a) a standard four-sessions-a-week analysis on the couch, (b) a condensed analysis with two double-sessions held once a week on a same day, and (c) a telephonic analysis interparsed with some occasional presential sessions. I discuss the tranference–countertransference implications of this evolution.