The Unseen Frame in Professional Cultures

This paper offers a model of healthy and pathological functioning in the professions generally, illustrated with specific discussion of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Using Bleger's concept of the unseen frame, it is proposed that when a profession is established at local or institutional level, it passes through an initial symbiotic dependence on the frame, conceived of as an aspect of the relationship with the local founder or early leaders. If, however, the necessary development from symbiosis to independent functioning fails, the frame then becomes a stabilised organisation to which the ego of the individual adapts and limits itself in order to go on belonging. Since an incomer to such a culture threatens to expose and shatter the unseen frame, pressure is brought to bear on the incomer to adapt. An incomer who represents core-professional principles may come to pose a threat felt to be extreme, leading to a rapid ‘figure-ground’ type of oscillation between recognition and non-recognition of what is at stake. Under extreme threat, the culture may render the incomer and the associated core professional principles taboo, resulting in further impoverishment of the culture.