Changing Location

When the analyst changes his office, the very function of the frame as a container of the psychic processes at work in analysis is brought into play. In its first sense, the frame is an ensemble of technical modalities that organise the meetings between the analysand and the analyst, a formal and contractual arrangement designed to promote the establishment of the process. Its essential dimension belongs therefore to the register of temporality, as is emphasised by the fixed number of sessions per week and the regular duration of each of them.

However, the frame also implies a place in external reality. As such, it is a space that is cathected, into which a set of representations, often unconscious, are projected, which pertain to the very history of the subject. In this respect, the place where the session takes place embodies psychic space for both protagonists of the situation. It also constitutes the in-between space (l'entre-deux), which can return both in memory and in dreams, an immemorial place or, finally, the theatre set that organises the stage on which the two psyches enter into dialogue.

The place of the session also raises the question of intimacy. For the analysand, the material frame is an anonymous place where he is carried away. He adorns it with imaginary elements deposited unwittingly in his internal universe. For the analyst, it is the place where he spends most of his time in his daily practice and where he reveals something of himself, even when he strives to observe the appropriate neutrality which his profession legitimately requires of him. On the analysand's side, two transference poles are constantly involved: onto the real person of the analyst, that of daily life, and onto the object that is the depositary of multiple transference movements. The equilibrium between the two dimensions varies according to the power of the ritual punctuating the session. With regard to the frame, they feature as time and space. Here, the two categories echo