Reflections on Thomas Ogden’s Contiguous-Autistic Position: Thoughts on the End of the Analytic Process

In this writing, I will attempt to outline some reflections that arise from reading works by Thomas Ogden found in the text ‘The Primitive Edge of Experience’ from 1989. In particular, among the numerous points of reflection, I will try to focus on two aspects: rethinking the conclusion of analysis between separation and separateness, revisiting some aspects of Quinodoz’s (1991) and a brief re-examination of the dimension of temporality in the concluding process, trying to combine theoretical insights with clinical material from the fifth year to the ninth year of an analysis, conducted four times a week, with a woman. Although these are excerpts from sessions far from the conclusion of the analytic process, it seemed to me that I could find, in some passages, significant psychic movements that refer to some fantasies about the conclusion of the analysis, which can finally enter the field of thoughts shared between analyst and patient, despite the emergence of experiences characteristic of the contiguous-autistic position, in which part of the patient’s mind seems to remain.