In the movie Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner plays a man estranged since adolescence from his father, an avid baseball fan. One day Costner hears a voice say, "If you build it he will come," which compels him to carve out a baseball playing field in the midst of a corn pasture in rural Iowa. His neighbors think he is crazy to undertake such folly; nevertheless, he perseveres and creates a diamond-shaped sports ground bordered by tall spires of ripening corn that becomes the setting of the film's denouement: a dreamy sequence of long deceased Hall of Fame baseball players emerging like heroes through corn stalk curtains onto this field of dreams and, finally, an oneiric reunion and longed-for game of catch with his father. The pastoral setting, meticulously cleared from the thick rows of corn, had to be built first in order for there to be a setting in which Costner's beloved baseball players could make their appearance, dreamed once again back into existence. However, these athletes could only endure as long as they remained within the boundaries of this field of dreams: once they stepped out of the baseline they vanished.
In this paper, I explore and expand upon Jose Bleger’s (1967/2013) classic paper, “Psycho-Analysis of the Psycho-Analytic Frame,” recently retranslated from Spanish, and examine the interaction between the analytic setting or frame and the psychoanalytic process that occurs within that setting. In going forward, it is important to keep in mind three primary concepts of Bleger: the psychoanalytic situation is the overarching concept that is comprised of two elements; the first is the analytic setting or frame2 as the enclosure in which the second element, the psychoanalytic process, may unfold. Just as Costner first had to construct the baseball field in order for the field of dreams to come alive, so the clinician must establish the analytic frame as the space in which the process of analysis may flourish. And just as Costner’s fabled players could only exist within the confines of this field of dreams, so disruptions to the analytic setting or frame can bring a halt to the development of the analytic process. I will examine the essential importance of the setting as described in the writings of Bleger, Winnicott and Andre Green and the effects that disturbances in the frame have upon the analytic process that occurs within the structure of that setting. Furthermore, I offer a view of the analytic process as an “incessant process of transformation” (Green, 2005, p. 34) arising from the mutual intersubjective dreaming that unfolds in the treatment dyad as described by Cassorla, Ogden and myself. When inevitable disturbances occur causing a “crack” (Bleger, 2013, p. 235) in the frame, a “phantom world” (p. 230) of archaic emotions is released that shakes the stability in the analytic (process) field of dreams; yet, paradoxically, the capacity for mutual dreaming must be restored in order to work through these primitive apparitions. Finally, I present a clinical vignette to illustrate a disruption in the analytic setting, stirred by contributions from the analysand and myself, and how a rejuvenated capacity for our mutual dreaming provided a medium through which the setting was repaired. This vignette continues the discussion of Mr. R. from the last chapter, but through a different lens – his attacks on the analytic setting and the transformational field of dreams.
Bleger’s paper is densely written and challenging to comprehend, even for analysts familiar with the contributions of the River Plate region:3 his use of terms such as agglutinated objects and the glischro-caric position can give the reader a sense of impenetrable thickets in a foreign terrain. Another source of ambiguity is that Bleger appears to use the “setting” in two different ways: first, to denote the actual formal elements (fees, frequency, etc.); and second, as a virtual space into which the patient and analyst project unbearable aspects of their respective psyches. Therefore, the first usage refers to concrete factors which are relative invariants and the latter addresses metaphorical aspects of the setting that are unique to each individual couple. Regardless of the difficulty of the paper, I believe there is much of value to be discovered here that is clinically relevant.
I suggest that we think of the setting as comprised of “nonhuman” factors, discussed in this segment, “object relational” aspects, considered in the next section and, finally, aspects of the analyst’s “person” (including his mental functioning). Freud (1912, 1913c) originally described the importance of establishing the ground rules for psychoanalysis (abstinence, neutrality, free association, etc.) that aimed at safeguarding the transference so that it may flourish free of intrusions from the analyst. Winnicott (1949) creatively introduced the notion that the formal setting of the analysis, i.e., the ground rules, is not simply an inert background but itself carries important unconscious meaning, especially in the treatment of more troubled patients:
For the neurotic the couch and warmth and comfort can be symbolical of mother’s love; for the psychotic it would be more true to say that these things are the analyst’s physical expression of love. The couch is the analyst’s lap or womb, and the warmth is the live warmth of the analyst’s body.
(p. 72) [italics in original]
But perhaps these concrete elements of the analytic frame also carry a meaning that has not yet been transformed into an object relationship as Winnicott asserts? Searles (1960), in his book The Nonhuman Environment in Normal Development and in Schizophrenia, suggests a developmental phase in which the infant is not only undifferentiated from its human (maternal) environment but also from the nonhuman milieu and is “unable to be aware of the fact that he is living rather than inanimate” (p. 36). Furthermore, Searles states
at unconscious levels of concept formation, subjective oneness with that [nonhuman] sector of the environment persists long after differentiation on a purely perceptual and conscious level has been effected.
(p. 37)
Thus, in addition to Winnicott’s emphasis on the relationship to the human (maternal) environment from which the infant must differentiate itself, Searles highlights the more elemental task of separating from the nonhuman environment and also asserts that traces persist in the psyche of that earlier state of oneness. Searles does not connect his ideas about the nonhuman environment to our understanding of the analytic setting, but his thoughts seem to me to link with the importance of the inanimate “pragmatic” aspects of the frame such as fees, the analyst’s office, schedule, etc. His emphasis on the undifferentiated state between the infant and the nonhuman environment appears to anticipate Bleger’s exploration of a symbiosis between split off parts of the analyst and patient that are “deposited” in the non-human aspects of the analytic setting.
Bleger (2013) further develops the model of the setting and speaks of an “ideally normal setting” (p. 229) that, when maintained, is almost invisible; not consciously perceived but always there, providing the boundary in which psychic growth evolves. Bleger adds, and I think this is his major contribution beyond Winnicott’s original idea, that the setting holds in abeyance a “ ‘phantom world’ of the most primitive and undifferentiated organization”4 (p. 230). This phantom world is “deposited” in the setting through projective identification of unbearable parts of the patient and analyst and “in such a way that a large part of the subject’s ego is estranged in the other” (p. 33). However, Bleger asserts, there is a “symbiotic link” between parts of the analyst and/or patient deposited in the setting and the individual (analyst or analysand) who has projected those parts. This symbiosis permits the analytic process to move forward because the dangerously destabilizing experiences have been incarcerated in the frame.
Bleger often uses language that suggests the frame is a nonhuman enclosure, which he compares to an “institution”: the psychotic part of the personality (Bion, 1957) is “deposited in the setting” (p. 231) and its phantoms are released through “cracks” in that frame, infiltrating the psychoanalytic process in an avalanche of elemental anxieties that have been placed into the setting in order to protect the analytic process from experiences too powerful to be managed.5
Bleger, importantly, uses the term “immobilized” to refer to the status of parts of the personality evacuated into the setting. This immobilization essentially freeze dries the psychotic part of the personality that is rendered as non-process (Baranger, Baranger & Mom, 1983; Bleger, 1967/2013) and remains lodged in the frame in a state of suspended animation, separated out from the evolving analytic process. It is important to note that those parts of the analyst and analysand “estranged” in the setting are not transformed while the contents of the psychoanalytic process undergo ever-evolving transformations (Bion, 1965). Thus, in terms of Bionian (1962b) language, it would be incorrect to say that the psychotic part of the personality deposited in the setting is “contained” there, since containment always implies that the contained is transformed, processed, digested, etc.
This phantom world arrested as non-process originates in the deepest recesses of both the patient’s and the analyst’s mind. Bleger asserts that the patient and analyst come to analysis with their own internal settings: each bring with them their own fears and anguish as well as environmental requirements to keep such anxieties at bay. In addition, from the perspective of intersubjective unconscious processes (Brown, 2010, 2011a), I believe that the idiosyncratic internal settings the patient and analyst bring to the psychoanalytic situation may combine along shared areas of conflict and overlapping needs for safety. The deepest regions of primal fears in each become a fused chimera that is projected into the frame, immobilized there as non-process6 until the psychoanalytic process is capable of tolerating and transforming these experiences. Both members of the dyad unconsciously look to the frame to house and freeze their deepest fears (each individual’s as well as the “third” area of their interconnected pain), the nature of which may be considered from various developmental perspectives. In Bleger’s view, these primitive agonies are about undifferentiation (agglutinated objects), including the loss of psyche-soma discrimination, and predate Melanie Klein’s description of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. I think that Frances Tustin’s (1986) observations about autistic anxieties of dissolving and falling out of oneself are also relevant here.
I have been addressing the characteristics of the “phantom world” encased in the frame and now turn to considering the “ideally normal setting” from an object relational perspective. Winnicott (1949) spoke of how the physical qualities of the frame are concretely experienced by the very disturbed patient as equivalent to the mother, but the situation is significantly different in less troubled neurotic patients and/or when experienced by the non-psychotic part of the mind. When potentially destabilizing psychotic elements have been cordoned off in the setting to safeguard the analytic process, the frame is then experienced unconsciously as an invisible secure state of primordial oneness with the mother, which is referred to by many authors using different terminology.7 Winnicott (1955) associates Freud’s concepts of primary narcissism and primary identification with what he (Winnicott) calls the holding environment:
In primary narcissism the environment is holding the individual, and at the same time the individual knows of no environment and is at one with it.
(p. 19) [italics in original]
Sandler (1960) refers to a feeling state that he calls the background of safety, which is defined as the experience of sensory integration that protects the infant from traumatic sensory overload “that we take for granted as a background to our everyday experience” (p. 352). Other related concepts are Tustin’s (1994) rhythm of safety and Grotstein’s (1977) description of the background object of primary identification, both of which are internalizations of the earliest maternal experiences of oneness that promote sensory-/ self-integration and live on as an unseen source of protection.
In addition to the nonhuman and object relational aspects of the analytic setting, characteristics of the analyst’s mental functioning and physical presence have received increasing attention. Andre Green (2005) emphasizes the vital role played by the fundamental rule as an essential factor of the analytic setting. In doing so, Green elevates the analyst’s free floating attention (Freud, 1912) to a central position as part of the frame. The fundamental rule, for Green, “encourages a mode of waking reveries during the session” (p. 33) and a view of the analytic pair as a “ dialogical couple in which analysis is rooted” (p. 33) [italics in original]. By adopting a benevolent attitude of “understanding receptivity,”8 the analyst opens himself to the flow of unconscious transmissions emanating from the patient and from within himself. In an earlier paper, Green (1975) likened the analytic setting to the body that is silently present when healthy, but demands our attention when disturbed by illness. Green’s metaphor of the analytic setting as a body dovetails with Bleger’s (1967/2013) original observation that “the patient’s setting is his most primitive fusion with the mother’s body” (p. 240). Lemma (2014) has extended this to include the body of the analyst as an integral constituent of the analytic setting, which she has termed the “embodied setting” (p. 225). This concept refers to aspects of the analyst’s appearance that remain relatively constant such as one’s typical attire, consistent health, hairstyle, etc., and that
When the analyst’s body reaches the patient’s awareness because of a more obvious change (e.g., pregnancy, weight fluctuations, a visible injury, change in hairstyle), it mobilizes primitive phantasies and related anxieties in the patient.
(p. 228)
However, Green (2005) later considered the model of the dream, rather than the metaphor of maternal care, to best describe the analytic frame; indeed, he sees a direct parallel between the “conditions of the setting and those of the dream” (p. 57). In this regard, any failures of the dream function adversely affect the capacity of the analytic setting to be a generative haven for a creative analytic process: what should have been a field of dreams becomes an arena for the “phantom world” of nightmares, night terrors and the “white terror9 of what Green terms “blank dreams.” 10
Bion’s (1962b, 1965, 1970, 1992) theory of dreaming has had a profound effect on contemporary psychoanalytic theory and has given us new ways to conceptualize the nature of the interactive psychoanalytic process that occurs within the analytic setting.11 The dream-work Freud (1900) introduced accounted for how unconscious impulses were disguised so that they may pass by the censor unnoticed into consciousness; however, Bion (1992) subsumed dreaming under alpha function and in doing so stated that dreaming operated constantly, while we are awake and asleep, to transform affects into thinkable thoughts. In other writings, I (Brown, 2012, 2013; Chapter 3) have termed alpha function as the “engine of transformations,” which is achieved through the unconscious work done by the linked alpha functions of patient and analyst constantly at work to transform the affects arising from the encounter between their respective psyches. Indeed, Bion has single-handedly expanded our appreciation of the complexity of what occurs between patient and analyst: the archeological model has been supplemented by a view of the analytic process as mutual intersubjective dreaming (see Chapter 4), which, as Green states, produces “an incessant process of transformation” (p. 34). To say that this incessant mutual dreaming is operating is to say that the analytic process is at work.
When treatment is progressing smoothly, as Bleger has said, the setting is an almost invisible factor in which the analytic process may proceed. In this situation, the analyst and patient are engaged in a constant unconscious dialogue enabled by subliminal communications, achieved by projective and introjective processes, between their alpha functions. This is a situation Cassorla (2008) has called “dreams-for-two,” which creates a shared emotional experience that each partner represents in his own idiosyncratic manner, a concept related to Ogden’s (1994) notion of the “inter-subjective analytic third” in which a third subjectivity is unconsciously created from the individual psyches of patient and analyst. However, when there is a disruption of the frame the crevasse that forms unleashes the previously interred bogeymen that invade the analytic process. In the best of situations, small perturbations affect the analytic couple who are able to dream/transform their shared turbulence.
On the other hand, when the disruption to the frame is severe, the primitive forces released flood the setting with a devastating blow to the psychoanalytic process: anxieties of a psychotic and autistic nature overload the connected alpha functions of analyst and analysand, thereby completely arresting the process of dyadic dreaming/transformation. The analytic couple is thus faced with a situation that Ogden (2003b, 2004a) likens to a night terror: the individual, or in this case the analytic couple, is confronted with such awesome fears that the capacity of the mind to dream is entirely overrun. The equivalent for the analytic couple is what Cassorla (2012, 2013) calls “non-dreams-for-two,” which can result in chronic enactments of that which cannot be transformed by the patient and analyst dreaming together. This presents the analyst with a seemingly impossible dilemma: how to rescue the analytic process, which depends on shared dreaming, when the capacity for dreaming itself is disabled?
In summary, the setting is the “depositary” (Bleger, 1967/2013) for the deepest anxieties of the patient, the analyst and, I add, the shared intersubjective terrors that arise from the intersection of their respective psyches. The analyst and patient maintain a symbiotic link between themselves and the disowned terrors each has projected into the setting, which protects the analytic process from being destabilized by the contents of the frame. These agonies are deposited in the frame through projective identification and are immobilized in a state of suspended animation, thereby allowing the analytic process to develop without being overwhelmed by the terrors encased in the setting as non-process. Thus, the contents of the setting remain unchanged and do not evolve, which is in contrast to the material of the analytic process that is constantly being transformed through the mutual unconscious dreaming of the analytic pair and apres coup in the here-and-now of the session. But is this contrast between the non-process contents of the setting that do not evolve and the contents of the analytic process that undergo transformation as sharp as Bleger asserts? For example, when an intersubjective amalgam is formed from similar fears in the analyst and patient, is this combination assembled in the analytic process or in the frame? Although Bleger does not refer to “trauma,” it seems to me that his view of what has been deposited in the setting remains separated from the on-going analytic process and exists similarly to that of a trauma that may not be transformed until gaining access to that analytic process.
Like so many analytic concepts, Bleger’s notion of the setting appears similar to other related ideas such as the Barangers’ (1961/2008) conception of a bastion and Cassorla’s (2012, 2013) non-dreams-for-two. In my opinion, Bleger’s concept differs from these because the mental experiences that have been exiled to the setting remain distinct from, and viewed as having no impact on, the analytic process. In contrast, the shared unconscious phantasy of the analytic couple that the Barangers describe and the arrest of mutual dreaming in the dyad detailed by Cassorla reflect an analytic process that has become stalled because the couple are unable to process the affects that are active in their relationship. Rather than being absent from the analytic process and encased in the setting, these emotional experiences delineated by the Barangers and Cassorla are alive in the process and have a stranglehold on it. It seems probable that the formation of a bastion or halt to dreams-for-two is a consequence of the analytic process being flooded by powerful emotions that have been prematurely freed from the setting.
But how do the fears enclosed in the setting enter the analytic process without derailing the analytic work? As noted previously, there may be major tears in the setting that let loose its contents in a flood of primitive emotions to upend the analytic process with a catastrophic effect. Optimally there is a succession of small fractures that release doses of the encased fears that shake the analytic process, but are not ruinous to its functioning. However, the nature of what has been kept apart in the setting is defined by each member of the analytic dyad and the “thirdness” of what is constructed by their unconscious intersubjective connection. For some analytic couples, aggression may be so terrifying that it is projected into the frame and kept there indefinitely by an unconscious collusion. In other analyses, a shared unconscious phantasy that loss/separation is literally “unthinkable” may lead to the disappearance of such themes from the analytic process that have been deposited in the frame (as in the clinical vignette in this chapter). Thus, predictable breaks in the frame such as weekends, change in fees, etc.,12 are unavoidable and necessary as a means to slowly introduce manageable bits of deposited fears into the analytic process for “gradual and controlled re-introjection” (Bleger, 2013, p. 35). In this manner, the re-absorption of elements previously frozen in the setting becomes one source of material for the analytic couple to dream/ transform in the analytic process, in addition to unconscious themes that arise spontaneously from their interacting psyches.
I wish to return to the analysis of Mr. R., whom I presented to Freud, Reik and Bion in the imagined “consultations” in Chapter 5, to look at the material from a different vertex – his attacks on the analytic frame. In that chapter, I mainly addressed how my agenda to convince him that his trouble relying on me kept me from being adequately receptive to the deep feelings of sadness, weakness (expressed in disdain for gay men) and fears of loss with which Mr. R. struggled. On two occasions, he abruptly terminated the analysis, only to return because of his anxiety about losing his wife. Mr. R.’s sudden decisions to immediately end the analysis occurred without any apparent warning: he simply and calmly said he was not returning and thanked me for my help. The manner in which he abruptly ended our work understandably left me feeling blindsided, weak and helpless. As I reflected on Mr. R.’s mode of ending, it seemed clear that his feelings of weakness and dependency had been projected into me and now had become my burden with which to struggle, leaving me feeling puny and impotent. After his return, I brought up his leaving suddenly as a means by which he got rid of feeling weak and “gay” and instead sought to evoke those emotions in me, i.e., “giving” them to me as my problem to handle. He paid lip service to my interpretation, but it did not seem to affect him and I interpreted how painful it must be for him to experience such feelings. He agreed and went on, with much emotion, to speak about his shame that his business was dropping off and it had become a struggle to afford analysis. I said that the expense of his analysis had become difficult financially and that there was also an emotional “cost” in facing how impoverished, weak and dependent it made him feel. The analysis appeared to take on a fresh aliveness until some months later when he again unexpectedly and without warning terminated treatment at the end of a session, leaving me feeling not only helpless but also incredibly angry.
This vignette begins at a point when the analytic situation was intact and within which a good analytic process was underway produced by the intertwining of our dreaming/alpha functions: his anger, feelings of weakness and dependency were expressed in dreams, associations and my related reveries. In retrospect, I believe that Mr. R. simultaneously attacked me as well as the setting when he abruptly terminated analysis. The attack on me as analyst was expressed by the forceful projective identification of his feelings of weakness and dependency into me, perhaps to show me the true force of these emotions to which I may not have been adequately receptive. Simultaneously, his attack on the setting by stopping treatment unleashed a deeper experience of helplessness that had been cordoned off in the frame that exceeded our ability to transform-/dream at that time. However, when he resumed treatment the second time, we were able to repair the damage to the setting and reestablish a fresh aliveness to the analytic process that permitted a deeper elaboration of his feelings of impoverishment and helplessness. However, it seems that deeper terrors of loss, shared by each of us in the context of our own histories and unconsciously sensed as too unbearable for the analytic process, were projected into the analytic setting and thereby rendered non-process, awaiting expression at some future point. Nevertheless, Mr. R. again suddenly ended the analysis, once more leaving me feeling impotent and angry and also seriously mangling the frame.
When he called to resume analysis for the third time, I was reluctant to restart working together. Mr. R. was apologetic for acting like a “jerk” and promised never to suddenly end treatment. I said that I appreciated his apology, but that we needed to understand what this was about and he said that his wife had threatened to leave him because of his constant anger and unabating depressed moods. Over a period of many sessions Mr. R. spoke movingly about his anger toward his wife when she had a woman friend staying at their home, which made him furious because he felt abandoned. His rage took on an Oedipal cast: he was excluded from the special, intimate time his wife and her friend enjoyed and this was an unbearable loss for Mr. R. As we explored his rage and feelings of being dismissed, I was mindful that he had previously ended treatment suddenly around feeling dependent and that I had a three-week vacation coming up soon. I grew anxious that he would end treatment once again and, in my desire to prevent this, I began to over-interpret his fears of realizing his dependency on me and his feeling abandoned by my upcoming vacation. On reflection, I was attempting to treat my anxiety of loss, which was likely magnified by Mr. R.’s projection into me of his similar fears. Thus, Mr. R. and I seem to have been caught in a morass of loss, anger and abandonment – an intersubjective analytic third or non-dream-for-two – which defied our capacity to collectively dream and transform.
In meeting again to discuss resuming analysis for the third time, Mr. R.’s apology for stopping treatment without warning and his admission that he had acted like a “jerk” felt genuine. When I said this was an action we needed to understand he quickly reiterated his previous fear that his wife would leave him because of his anger, something he did not want, and so he hoped we could resume. After further discussion, I agreed to resume the analysis, but was aware of not being able to fully relax into a receptive state of mind; thus, my capacity for free floating attention, which is an element of the setting (Green, 2005), had only been partly repaired. I found myself on the alert for early signs of his possibly leaving again and so my receptivity was compromised as I interpreted his fears of depending on me and his resentment about that. In retrospect, I can see that the emotional field became permeated with strong feelings of loss, anger and abandonment that Mr. R. needed me to dream and help transform for him, but instead I was on a mission to keep him from leaving once more. The fears of loss were already alive and powerful in me (my elderly father’s health was fading), but I failed to reflect sufficiently on my experience to realize the massive projective identification that was also in operation; thus, the analytic process had been overtaken by my fears of an actual loss and had ceased to be a field of dreams.
However, with this awareness I was able to recover my receptivity to the sadness and loss that entered the analytic process in a more manageable way: powerful emotions that previously swept into the analytic process that overwhelmed Mr. R. and were projected into me, were now more manageable. Mr. R. said he felt more “alive” and was pleased that his business picked up as well, and he and his wife entertained buying some vacation property. He and I, too, were now a fertile analytic couple – the analytic process now restored and the “phantoms” too difficult for us to countenance now de-activated and reposing in the setting. On a Monday session, he appeared troubled and said that he and his wife had looked at some property to buy, a lovely spot that excited him until he noticed a small nest along the perimeter of the planned home. “If we bought that property and built on that spot it would mean an end to that family of little critters, chipmunks, or whatever they were; I’d be killing them, the helpless little animals.” I said it was ironic that building a new structure and the lively feeling that gave him should bring about the death of these small, helpless creatures and he nodded a silent agreement.
The murderous implications of building a vacation home unleashed a new attack on our work: maybe he should quit again right now, he said; mocking himself that the thought of killing a “few rodents” should evince such powerful feelings of guilt and sadness. For some reason, the death of his younger brother in a motorcycle accident many years earlier came to my mind. It was something he had mentioned in a casually factual manner once or twice during the analysis, but he and I passed it over as if was a story about someone distant from him that held little importance.13 As I thought about why this came to my mind, I believe the word “rodents” was linked to his disdain for his brother and how Mr. R., then in his twenties, did not attend the funeral. I then said that “You’re surprised that causing the death of a few ‘rodents’ would upset you so much and I find myself thinking about your brother’s death in the accident and how you don’t remember feeling anything about it.” He replied that “It wasn’t much of a loss for me. We weren’t close and he was a ‘bad boy’ in town. I sort of expected that accident would happen anyway. Those little mice in the nest, I can feel something for them, but not him. . .” A long pause followed and he spoke softly about a time when they were much younger, went for a walk in the woods, and his brother got lost. Mr. R. frantically searched for him and remembered crying, then burst into tears in the session. In subsequent weeks, he visited his brother’s and both parents’ graves and cried a cry of deep release of sadness.
In a paper delivered at the 1975 International Psychoanalytic Association congress, Andre Green (1975) noted three trends in the development of psychoanalytic theory and practice. The first is characterized by the search for the “historical reality of the patient” (p. 9), which aims to discover repressed remnants of the actual past as these are revealed in the transference. The second tendency is represented by the movement towards object relations theory in which the transference is considered as the externalization of the analysand’s inner object world into the psychoanalytic process occurring between patient and analyst. The third development focuses on the mental processes of the patient and analyst with an appreciation of the role of the analytic setting, which, however, Green does not see as a precondition to the establishment of the analytic process. Though he does not explicitly speak of a fourth trend, in this paper Green implicitly offers an additional perspective that speaks of the necessity of a setting that “allows the birth and development of an object relation [and psychoanalytic process]” (p. 11).
At this point, I want to remind the reader of the model I proposed of the analytic process in Chapter 1 and we can now appreciate the vital role the setting plays in it:
The active here-and-now process of continuous transformations of affects arising in the intersubjective field to create new meaning which is achieved through a perpetual unconscious joint process of dreaming and Nachtraglichkeit (apres coup) made possible through the linked alpha functions of the patient and analyst, all of which is enabled by, and depends upon, a stable analytic setting/frame.
Related to establishing and maintaining the setting, Fromm (1989) writes that the analyst must also function as a medium who sustains the analytic frame as a preserve of illusion in which the transference and countertransference are viewed as dream-like rather than factual. However, just as Costner’s long deceased baseball players could only come to life within the limits of the playing field, so serious disruption of the setting results in an arrest of the analytic couple’s capacity “to dream the analysis as it is taking place” (Bion, 1992, p. 216). Such disturbances to the frame “release” the primordial affects deposited there, which overwhelm the dyad’s mutual dreaming made possible through their linked alpha functions; thus, the capacity to digest and give meaning to emotions is curtailed and what ought to have been a field of dreams collapses into a constricted arena of unmetabolized and concrete experience.
When analysis was resumed for the third time, I was reluctant to begin once more. As Green (1975, 2005) suggests, the fundamental rule, including the analyst’s free floating attention, should be considered as part of the analytic setting/frame. In this connection, I seriously questioned whether that component of the setting, that is, my capacity to be comfortably receptive to Mr. R.’s unconscious communications, had been so ruined that the framework for treatment was irreparably damaged. Bion (1992) has emphasized the attack on the analyst’s alpha function in which
The analyst is to be so treated that he cannot stay awake, and so interrupted and importuned that he cannot go to sleep,
(p. 217)
which was the effect Mr. R. had on my ability to think clearly and to be empathically accessible to him. Additionally, Ogden (2004a) states the analyst
must possess the capacity for reverie, that is, the capacity to sustain over long periods of time a psychological state of receptivity. . . The analyst’s reveries are central to the analytic process in that they constitute a critical avenue through which the analyst participates in dreaming the dreams that the patient is unable to dream on his own.
(p. 862)
However, when I considered resumption of the analysis my feeling of being an enraged and impotent analyst felt real and without metaphorical (transference) value; thus, my cognitive functioning had slipped into a concrete mode and the analytic process had become a place of facts rather than a field of dreams. I questioned whether I could work through these emotions in order to be a receptive dreaming partner with Mr. R.
Mr. R.’s reply to my interpretation and subsequent associations about fears of losing family members, whom he greatly valued, surprised him and made him question his long-held sense of poverty. The session became more animated as he puzzled about this conflict and the reasons why he diminished the importance of his family. His fears of loss and abandonment took on new meaning as he was able to slowly absorb into himself the terror of loss that was previously deposited in the setting and, once that setting had been trampled on, flooded Mr. R. who then projected these experiences into me. These projections readily found company in worries about my father’s failing health, which would have left me an abandoned “orphan,” and I became aware of my wish to see anguished fears of loss as solely Mr. R.’s problem to own. Thus, I believe that Mr. R. and I had developed an unconscious pact to consign our overlapping fears of loss to the metaphorical realm of the setting where they were kept immobilized out of the analytic process. My earlier interpretations about his anxiety of depending on analysis missed the mark and it was not until the capacity for mutual dreaming was restored (his dream in the session coincident with my reverie) that the setting was repaired, which had been damaged by the loss of my free floating attention (Green, 2005) due to the repeated terminations. In subsequent months he was able to deal with the death of his younger brother, killed in a motorcycle accident when Mr. R. was in his twenties: this was a fact that he briefly mentioned at the beginning of analysis but had been “forgotten” by both of us and placed into the analytic setting where it remained cordoned off from the analytic field of dreams as non-process. When I presented my work with Mr. R. to a study group a few years ago, I spontaneously remembered one of the few times I rode a motorcycle and on one occasion came close to a possibly deadly accident. Thus, Mr. R. and I had our own reasons for blotting out the affective portions of the memory of deadly motorcycle accidents and, in Bleger’s model, these “phantom” memories/emotions were freeze-dried and relegated to the setting. In retrospect, the suddenness of his terminations appeared to convey something about the unforeseen and startling loss of his brother; an experience projected into me when I had to endure the realization of an analysis that was suddenly and unexpectedly wrecked.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s (1995) statement that “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams,” can be paraphrased to apply to psychoanalysis: analyses grow old and stale because the capacity for mutual dreaming between patient and analyst becomes arrested. Like dreams themselves, mutual dreaming depends on certain conditions without which transformations of emotional experience will not occur. I have focused on the necessity for the analyst to establish and maintain the analytic setting or frame that becomes the protective enclosure in which the process of analysis may proceed. The setting holds the more primitive internal objects and associated affects as “non-process” (Bleger, 1967), meaning that they remain separated from the analytic process occurring within the frame. However, with more deeply disturbed patients who seek to dismember the setting and with less troubled analysands who attack the frame (as Mr. R. did by twice stopping analysis abruptly), insult to the setting opens up a fissure through which the split off or repressed phantoms held there invade and hijack the analytic process.
When this occurs, the analyst and analysand are confronted with new “material” to dream/transform; however, successful transformation of the emotional effects of ruptures to the setting that have taken over the analytic process depends on the capacity for mutual intersubjective dreaming. In the best of situations, the analytic couple are able to manage the disturbance to the process: an intersubjective analytic third is created from the unconscious operation of combined projective and introjective identifications; the alpha function, which is the “engine of transformations,” of each partner kicks into gear to assign characters to represent the affects permeating the field of the analytic process; and the analyst formulates some interpretation to the patient that optimally evokes further associations to widen the web of meanings. In the case of Mr. R., his unannounced terminations ruptured the setting and the analytic process devolved into what Cassorla calls non-dreams for two and chronic enactments characterized by his provocations and my anxiety of treatment unexpectedly ending again. Our capacity to engage in a mode of mutual intersubjective dreaming was brought to a halt until I was able to recover a proper analytic attitude of receptivity, thus allowing me to gain a reflective distance from my contribution to the stalemate, repair the setting and restart a fertile analytic process.
1 Published as Brown (2015b) Ruptures in the analytic setting and disturbances in the transformational field of dreams. Psa Q, 84: 841–865.
2 Written in Spanish, the paper was translated into English and published in the International Journal for Psychoanalysis in 1967 under the title “Psycho-Analysis of the Psycho-Analytic Frame.” It was subsequently retranslated and published in 2013 as “Psychoanalysis of the Psychoanalytic Setting,” a chapter in a collection of Bleger’s papers, Symbiosis and Ambiguity. This new version is nearly identical to the former except that the Spanish word encaudre, translated as “frame” in the earlier paper, is now termed the “setting,” which I believe has contributed to some of the confusion about Bleger’s ideas; thus, many analysts use the terms “frame” and “setting” interchangeably, which I will do.
3 The River Plate forms the boundary between northern Argentina and Uruguay and a rich psychoanalytic tradition developed there, including Jose Bleger (Brown, 2010).
4 Bleger refers to these most primitive “phantoms” that inhabit the analytic setting as agglutinated objects .
5 Robert Langs wrote extensively about the therapeutic value of maintaining a consistent frame and that “alterations in the frame create a bipersonal field in which action, discharge, and evacuation, predominate” (1978, p. 111).
6 The means by which affective experiences are “immobilized” remains mysterious to me. It’s a process that seems analogous to “the cloud” in the computer world by which a piece of information is “de-activated” and deposited in the cloud where it remains until being “re-activated.” However, what I am suggesting is more of a metaphor than an explanation.
7 It is also important to note Faimberg’ s (2014) recent discussion of Winnicott’s (1955) lesser known view about the symbolic role of the father as another factor of the frame. Winnicott asserts that maintenance of the setting is the analyst’s responsibility and that, in ending the session, Faimberg asserts he is functioning as a paternal figure who is “acting to separate the patient from the ‘analysis-mother’” (p. 634).
8 Compare with Aguayo’s (2014) recent characterization of Bion’s recommended technical stance as “disciplined receptivity.” Issues of the analyst’s receptivity are the subject of Chapter 5.
9 A term used by one of my patients to describe a dream that was terrifying but with no content.
10 Put another way, “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams” (Marquez, 1995).
11 This may seem somewhat blurred to the reader. The capacity for dreaming is an aspect of the mental functioning of the analyst that is a central component of the analytic setting, while the activity of dreaming/transformation is necessary for the analytic process to proceed.
12 Also including changes in the analyst’s physical appearance; see Lemma (2014).