Boundaries and Gender: Their Interplay in the Analytic Situation

The concept of boundaries and distance in the analytic situation has been given little attention in the literature: distance not in the physical sense or, strictly, as an aspect of technical neutrality, but as a dimension of the affective interactions between patient and analyst. Distance is generally seen as the opposite of closeness, and both are understood to exist on a continuum from a hypothetical total intimacy and fusion, eliminating boundaries, to an equally hypothetical total isolation and absence of relatedness. Distance or closeness defines and reflects the fluctuations of affective tone in the analytic exchange—all analytic exchanges, verbal and nonverbal.

Bouvet focused specifically on the changes of distance between analyst and analysand and on the analysand's need to control boundaries and distance during analysis. In the pregenital and more primitive type of relating where symbolic displacements and expressions of undifferentiated emotions are common, the analyst, Bouvet believes, is experienced ambivalently, either as a good object to gratify all instinctual yearning or as the destructive, malevolent object threatening the integrity and cohesion of the patient's ego. When such pregenital object relating predominates in the transference, issues of distance and boundaries become crucial and the patient may develop serious problems of depersonalization if the analyst fails to maintain optimal distance