You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Research on the unconscious initially centred on considerations of memory and its vicissitudes. Interest subsequently extended to the transformations of the unconscious phantasies which arise in the analysand-analyst relationship and are manifested in the analytic process. This process comprises cycles of dynamic, economic, and structural changes that occur in the analysand and assume meaning in the transference relationship. I shall refer to unconscious processes here only in so far as they are observable in the analytic relationship.
Isolated manifestations of the unconscious can be observed in the pathology of everyday life and may also be considered by other disciplines. However, what is specific to psychoanalysis is the study of, and the drawing of conclusions about, unconscious phantasies and the subject's distortions of his or her infantile experiences, which are evaluated in the relationship between a subject and his or her object in the analytic situation. The purpose of the analytic situation is to create - for both the analysand and the analyst - a context of containment and of meaning to permit the construction of hypotheses about unconscious phenomena. The rule of abstinence and the establishment of the setting are intended to limit the arbitrariness of the analyst, and constitute the context of containment.
The introduction of the concept of ‘working through’ (Freud, 1914) was a milestone in the recognition of analysis as a succession of transformations. The dynamic conception thus relates not only to the situation of opposing forces, but also to the transformations of unconscious phantasies arising in