The Psychoanalytic Setting as the Instrument of the Container Function

Different settings reveal the operation of different psychical mechanisms; for this reason I try in this paper to take a fresh look at the psychoanalytic setting which underlies the specificity of what we psychoanalysts call psychoanalysis and helps to distinguish it from other forms of therapy—in particular, psychotherapy. In my view, the analyst's creative container function is expressed particularly through the setting. This setting is not an inert vessel, a mere juxtaposition of rules, but an active container which interacts dynamically with the process. Observance of the conditions of the psychoanalytic setting seems to me important if what comes to life is intended to be a psychoanalytic process; the analysand's (or analysand-to-be's) pressures on the analyst to abandon aspects of the setting can then sometimes be interpreted as unconscious attacks on the creative container function of the analyst and on that of the patient himself. A number of clinical examples are given, showing that, like 'Donkey Skin', the analysand may sometimes demand not only pieces of gold from psychoanalysis but also, unconsciously, its skin.