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The unconscious means of communication is developed in the analytic situation with great intensity and facility. In analysis, a space configuration is very similar to what a patient experiences in claustrophobia or in agoraphobia, and can also be compared with the mechanism of phobias in general. The importance of the structural elements of space, distance, time, etc. in the analytic situation is discussed. The
authors stress that the patient's expression of neurosis is a phobic way of avoiding the fundamental rule of free association.
The distance of the analyst to the couch, the handshaking before or after the hour, the way the patient lies on the couch, the analyst's posture, and like phenomena are dealt with. There is a discussion of patients who cannot tolerate ambiguity because of fear of losing control. In the countertransference, the analyst experiences a similar fear of loss of identity. In the authors' words, the analytic situation 'seems to have a quality of a fairy tale or dream, such as "once-upon-a-time"'.
The unconscious fantasies shared by the analyst and the patient, which also orient the manner in which the analytic field is proceeding, permit the analyst to select the timing of a precise fantasy. 'In any analysis if the analyst remained forever the good father to the patient, for instance, he might have good therapeutic results, but actually the analysis would have failed.' Insight is not merely interpretation repeated verbally by the patient but to be effective must produce some structural modification to be integrated within the mental apparatus of the patient.