Contemporary psychoanalysts are preoccupied with the nature of thinking and symbolization. Inspired by Bion, the mother is seen as central to the emergence of these capacities. The analyst is figured as inhabiting this basic maternal position and providing these essential functions. It is argued that the rendering of maternal/analyst functioning as containing and symbolizing is but one aspect of a “multi-verse” of maternal/analyst experience. If the mother is seen as central, most descriptions leave her a cipher, a subjectless figure that provides necessary “functions.” The paper investigates the terms frustration, function, and containing as vehicles through which the mother's interiority-desire, passion, and the important unknown-is more fully imagined. A dynamic picture of the mother-as-desiring-subject is detailed. (Kristeva, 2014)

The author describes a mother-of-desire who turns desire into responsibility, or care for the other . The psychoanalyst, likewise, is involved in care for the other. An ethics-of-care for the other suggests an attitude of fundamental respect for the unconscious. The paper concludes with a consideration of aspects of otherness in psychoanalytic work, those aspects the analyst has a responsibility to respect and care for: the other of background, the other of content, the other of absence, and the other as desire in the countertransference. (Chetrit-Vatine, 2014)