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It is an ever more widely held view that the therapeutic objective of analysis is fundamentally the unblocking, development, or acquisition of representative thought, especially if we are working with children. Winnicott (1971, 38) speaks of the analyst's work as aiming to bring the patient from an inability to play to the ability to play. Klein speaks about the depressive position and reparation, with the new way of looking at the past, openness to the future, and the creativity of thought which this entails, while Bion sees the analyst's task as being to create a space in which development is possible. Ogden speaks of becoming able to dream undreamed dreams.
There is also much agreement about the idea that it is the psychoanalytic setting which creates the conditions in which this may be realised.
A much-quoted metaphor which expresses the idea perfectly is Federico Flegenheimer's, of the setting as being like darkness in the cinema, or silence at a concert.
Freud's elaboration of the setting has dream-activity as its model. The patient lying on the couch is encouraged not to express himself by physical movement, just as muscular motor activity is suspended during REM sleep. The perception of external reality, which is on stand-by in sleep, is attenuated by the analyst's position behind the patient and by a certain continuity in the layout of the consulting room which makes it more of a background than a stimulus. The daily regularity of the time when sessions take place tends in turn to create a «background» or framing effect.
The observation of the inner world encouraged by this external setup is maintained by an interior setup in both patient and analyst: the patient is asked (explicitly or implicitly) to associate freely, refraining from criticising either morally or in terms of logical coherence what comes into his mind (in a certain sense the request is to renounce psychically «muscular» action, not actively interfering with the contents of one's free associatio