The Analytical Setting: Further Reflections. The Setting as a Safeguard for the True Self

“La régularité de ces rites (…) leur répétition tranquille, leur immuabilité convenue (…) étaient comme les garants de la neutralité bienveillante de cette oreille immobile à la quelle j'allais essayer de dire quelque chose (…)”.

In my earlier study (1991), in which I argued that technique should be adapted as far as possible to the needs of patients, I discussed the variations adopted by the analyst to respond to the patient's request for confirmation and acceptance and distinguished these from other variations which are exclusively in response to the needs of the analyst. I suggested that the former could be beneficial to some patients, at least in certain cases, whereas the latter, I argued, had for the most part negative effects on the analysis. Repeated “accidents over the course” of the analysis of a woman patient have led me to reflect further on the question and to continue my investigation of typologies of patients that may require that the analyst pay particular attention to the setting. In the above-mentioned study I was concerned with those patients who seem to express a need for a more elastic and personalized setting. In the present article I will attempt to describe a category of patients that appears to require the opposite, at least in the early phases of analysis: that is, a rigourously anonymous setting, as bare and impersonal as