On the Importance of the Setting in the Psychoanalytic Situation

For many years the significance of the setting in our psychoanalytic work has preoccupied my mind. This has sprung partly from observations I have made during my own daily activities throughout twenty years of psychoanalytic practice, and with time my thoughts on the subject have increased. It is also partly based on observations I have been able to make of colleagues' and candidates' work, through supervision, seminars and discussions. Finally, reading the psychoanalytic literature and listening to scientific papers has given me insight leading to the realisation that many a treatment has failed through nonchalance and lack of understanding of the fact that the setting really helps us in our comprehension of the patient and his psychic world. An adequate setting indeed means that the analyst is working with the patient's welfare in mind, without too much regard for his own personal and material needs. This implies that the analyst at every moment of the session should try to understand what is going on between himself and the analysand, as well as within the analysand and within the analyst himself.

The above-mentioned facts may seem self-evident and, as such, unnecessary to repeat. It appears, however, that some analysts do not take these factors into full consideration, and thus I find it appropriate to give my own opinion on them.

My point of departure is that without an adequate setting, it is not possible to create the necessary degree of feeling of security and confidence which constitutes the prerequisite for a successful handling of the other fundamental part of psychoanalytic work, namely the interpretive elaboration. Meltzer (1967) stresses this point. Bleger (1967) uses another word for the setting, speaking about the frame of psychoanalysis, and he maintains this as a constant, in contrast to the psychoanalytic