Frames of reference play a role in the constitution of our self, affecting its organization. Vice versa, our self becomes part of the frame of reference, influencing its development. Accordingly, the loss of a frame of reference might threaten the self with dissolution. In order to maintain the coherence of the self the subject might refuse to acknowledge the loss, even when frames of reference have collapsed or become inadequate. The frame of reference in which we are born will affect our early perception of the world.

The psychoanalytic frame of reference, represented by the setting, operates on two differ-ent levels: As a visible agreement between analyst and patient that regulates the encounter, and at the same time as an invariable constant that stays unrecognized. This mute aspect of the psychoanalytic frame becomes a depository of parts of the selves of both participants, while at the same time it becomes part of their personality organization (Bleger, 2013). This invisible aspect of the frame allows the patient to deposit in the setting his own frame of reference, containing archaic undifferentiated aspects of his self. In that case the process might be unrecognizably taking place in a frame of reference that differs from the one that establishes the psychoanalytic frame. The psychoanalytic frame is then used to maintain a psychic retreat that seems to be supported by the healthy aspects of the patient’s self.

Analysis becomes real and yet it is not, because it takes place in a frame of reference that the patient projects into the psychoanalytic frame.

A clinical case of a patient that uses the analytic process to maintain a state of psychic re-treat as described by Steiner (1993), establishing a forged contact with the analyst that wards off feelings of pain, separation and loss will be described. Emphasis is put on Bleger’s (1967) dialectic function of the psychoanalytic frame as an explicit and recognizable variable of the process, and as a depository of archaic parts of the personality, to describe why the process could not advance before the upcoming end of analysis helped reveal this dichoto-my. Ending analysis lead to a differentiation of both these aspects of the setting unveiling the attachment of the patient to her own frame of reference, hidden under the explicit psy-choanalytic frame.