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The evolution of psychoanalytic technique can be understood in part in relation to the importance placed upon interpretation. Once occupying a position of singular significance, interpretation today is viewed as central, but other forms of intervention have come to the forefront, at the very least as a way to facilitate the creation of an environment in which observations about states of inner conflict can be heard by the patient. One of these forms of intervention is “holding,” a term that is most often associated with the work of Winnicott.
In Holding and Psychoanalysis, Joyce Slochower uses as her point of departure Winnicott's concept of holding, which she conceptualizes in a somewhat different manner. Whereas Winnicott (/1965b) utilizes this term mainly to describe a form of parental care that suggests “not only the actual physical holding of the infant, but also the total environmental provision prior to the concept of living with” (p. 43), Slochower explores more the necessity to provide a certain kind of psychological ambience for a range of adult patients. With regard to the therapeutic process with adults, Winnicott's (/1965c) discussion of holding focuses primarily on the manner in which he tried to work with a selected group of patents who were experiencing the most primitive anxieties, such as “a fear of disintegration, or of annihilation, or of falling for ever and ever” (p. 240). These are patients who had not yet become sufficiently integrated and therefore “the main need is for an unclever ego-support, or a holding” (Winnicott, /1965c, p. 241). Slochower differentiates herself from Winnicott by not limiting her discussion of holding to the need for dependence. In this context, she states that under the best circumstances the analyst holds the patient as well as “the process” and that “the analyst's protective position provides the patient with an experience of safety within which self-exposure becomes possible” (Slochower, p. 23).