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“Complete candour coupled with the strictest discretion.”
This “pact” between analysand and analyst constitutes the “analytic situation.” (Freud 1940 {1938}, 173)
This Education Section, the first in a two-part series, aims to explore the sense given to the psychoanalytic situation and its borders, both physical and psychic, as well as the signification of its different terminologies - frame, setting, site, situation - terms that have varied from author to author, region to region, according to the meaning ascribed to that specific space which makes psychoanalysis possible.
The frame or setting could thus be said to be a “pact” - that is, an agreement between patient and analyst regarding the conditions within which the analytic work will be undertaken. In a curious coincidence, during the mid-twentieth century, authors from each of the three regions wrote what would become key papers or concepts regarding the analytic protagonists and the significance of the space they occupied together during an analysis.
Jose Bleger’s (1967) paper ‘The Psychoanalysis of the Psycho-analytic Frame’, Donald W. Winnicott’s (1954, 285-286) remarks on the psychoanalytic setting, and Leo Stone’s (1961) The Psychoanalytic Situation: An Examination of Its Development and Essential Nature would each raise and reveal questions regarding the nature of and the forces inherent in the setting itself within the analytic process. During this same period in France, Lacan’s unorthodox use of “scansion” - that is, abbreviating session times - brought about a flowering of reflection on the meaning and the function of the setting/frame.
Twenty-five years prior to his condensed remarks on the analytic pact, Freud (1911-1915 {1914}, 127, 133), had noted the need for regular session times, fixed fees, etc. While he acknowledged that the supine position was a remnant of the hypnosis technique, he added with his well-known honesty that he couldn’t “put up with being stared at by other people eight hours a day”