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The analytic setting or frame1 is generally thought to include the establishment and maintenance of the physical setting and of the psychoanalytic contract, which includes negotiation of the time, frequency of sessions, use of the couch and money, and the role of the analyst (Winnicott, 1956; Langs, 1998). Some analysts also include within this notion the delineation of ‘the data of analysis’, namely the patient’s free associations (Busch, 1995) and the analytic attitude. Many would also include the analyst’s internal setting, that is, the setting as a structure in the mind of the analyst – ‘a psychic arena in which reality is defined by such concepts as symbolism, fantasy, transference, and unconscious meaning’ (Parsons, 2007: 1444). Others still bring into the notion the analyst’s theoretical leanings (Donnet, 2005). In this chapter the term ‘analytic setting’ denotes both the pragmatic parameters and the analyst’s internal setting as defined by Parsons (2007). It is this definition that provides the basis for the elaboration of the ‘embodied setting’.
The function of the setting has been written about extensively. It has traditionally been understood to be the essential ‘background’ that provides the necessary containment and stimulus for the gradual unfolding of the patient’s transference. Within an object relational model one would add that it allows for the emergence of the unconscious phantasies that give the transference its dynamic specificity. Accordingly the role of the analyst is to be the custodian of the setting. This requires that the analyst not only pays close attention to how the patient reacts to the setting (the unconscious phantasies and resistances it may generate), but also carefully monitors her own internal processes, which can both facilitate (through free-floating attentiveness) or hinder (through the analyst’s own resistances and ‘blind spots’) the unfolding of an analytic process.
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