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Covid-19 forced a rupturing of the frame for every patient and analyst; it therefore seems especially apposite to revisit José Bleger's (1967) classic paper on the frame, when the analytic “dyad turned into mutual, dangerous persecutors” (p. 153). This thoughtful collection—a part of the IPA series of books that seek to revisit psychoanalytic classics in the face of change—was conceived of during the pandemic. Carlos Moguillansky's “Introduction” (pp. 14-20) frames the chapters. Pertinently, he distinguishes “the setting [which] was often confused with contract” (p. 17), but it has over the nearly two centuries, acquired a spectrum of meanings. It is both “a ritual game and a playing area” (p. 18). It offers a space “for the expression and play of the signifiers” (p.18). It is both “an agreement of rules” and also “an empty space—a blank—which is used as a pause, as a punctuation of discourse” (pp. 18, 19).
José Bleger's ideas while seminal, remain relatively unknown in the English-speaking world. One of the second-generation analysts of Rio de Plata, Bleger distinguished two components of psychoanalysis as being the process and the frame. It is against the mute constancy of the frame, that the analysis proceeds. The frame has the same function for the patient that symbiosis with the mother has for the infant. It is the fixed part of his personality, and also the most primitive part (p. 100). According to John Churcher (pp. 39-56) in his chapter “The psychoanalytic setting, embodiment and presence: Exploring José Bleger's concept of encuadre:” “When for some reason a disruption occurs, the setting suddenly changes its status: ‘from a background of a Gestalt, into a figure, that is, into a process.’” (p. 40). The setting (used interchangeably with frame by Churcher) is that invisible constant that is not observed till it is ruptured. Churcher equates this with the phantom limb that reminds us of the body schema. Any break of the frame by the analyst is potentially ca