Chapter 3 Setting – Process – Transference

One can see how necessary it is to clarify our ideas concerning the conceptual tools of the psychoanalyst’s work. The dispersion of the psychoanalytic field calls for a reunification. I have distinguished between classical treatment, treatment with selective variations, treatment with more or less constant variations and finally, the psychotherapies. Three notions need clarification.

It was introduced into psychoanalysis by two authors, independently, who proposed different definitions of it: Bleger, in Argentina, whose highly personal conception, linking it with symbiosis, only took hold in Latin America; and Winnicott, in England, whose conception has been widely adopted, in Europe at least. Let us note that the term used by Winnicott is ‘setting’ (cadre), which has much broader meaning than ‘frame’, for instance (also cadre). In French, it may be translated by dispositif. For my part, I have proposed a term that does not figure under this entry in the bilingual dictionary, that is, montage; but cadre is good enough. What is meant, in any case, by the term setting is the overall conditions of possibility required for practising psychoanalysis. This includes the material arrangements which govern the relations between analysand and analyst (payment of missed sessions, co-ordination of vacations between patient and analyst, length of sessions, mode of payment, etc.). These arrangements are fixed at the outset, constituting a convention between the two partners so as to avoid eventual discussions in the future. One has to distinguish, however, between this material setting, which serves as an analytic contract, and the fundamental rule on which analysts are divided. Some do not announce it, considering that they will have the opportunity of drawing attention to the patient’s omissions and silences, whereas others, including myself, prefer to announce it as the only

requirement laid down by the analyst concerning the analysand’s work. It will be accepted b