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The following two papers by Stefano Carta and Massimo Giannoni were presented at the Journal's conference in Lake Orta as part of a panel on the theme of tradition and the analytical setting.1 The question posed in the subtitle expresses the difficulties inherent in any attempt to achieve that delicate balance which good clinical practice requires, between the need to remain anchored within the traditional framework of the analytical setting and the capacity for original creative work necessary if we are to continue to develop as a discipline and to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world.
Not by chance all three of the presentations reflected the anxieties and doubts experienced by the analyst when the incapacity of the analysand for symbolization and for dreaming forces the analyst to step outside the safety of the setting in order to create the possibility for symbolic work. At the same time, however, these papers demonstrate very movingly how the creative capacity to make use of empathy and the symbolic function permits the analyst to overcome moments of analytical impasses.
In ‘Music in dreams and the emergence of the self’, Stefano Carta reflects on the meaning of music and acoustic images in dreams and suggests that music can sometimes better express the affective core of complexes. He shows how the sharing of the experience of listening to music in the setting can permit the analytical couple to access and to symbolize very archaic psychic levels.
In ‘The session of the two dreams’, Massimo Giannoni looks at how the interplay of the analyst's and the analysand's dreams and the sharing of the analyst's dream was able to compensate for a relational malfunctioning of the analytical couple which had led to an analytical impasse.