The paternal function in Winnicott: The psychoanalytical frame

My first aim has been to identify the implicit assumptions underlying Winnicott's detailed notes on a fragment of an analysis dating from 1955 and published after his death. The importance given by Winnicott to the father figure as early as 1955 is one of my discoveries; another is the deep Freudian roots of his thinking. In this essay I propose a new way of linking together the concepts of ‘paternal function’ and the ‘psychoanalytical frame’. Developing my hypothesis, I compare my reading of Winnicott and my way of reading José Bleger's study on the frame. Like Winnicott, I explore in detail a process of discovery, focusing on what the analyst and the patient are nor fully aware of …'as yet'. I am not proposing to unify Winnicott's and Bleger's thinking. My aim is to avoid the pitfall of eclecticism and, in so doing, to recognize both the related depths they sound in their thinking and their otherness. I want to share with the readers their ‘meeting’ in my mind.     

RUPTURES IN THE ANALYTIC SETTING AND DISTURBANCES IN THE TRANSFORMATIONAL FIELD OF DREAMS

This paper explores some implications of Bleger's (1967, 2013) concept of the analytic situation, which he views as comprising the analytic setting and the analytic process. The author discusses Bleger's idea of the analytic setting as the depositary for projected painful aspects in either the analyst or patient or both—affects that are then rendered as nonprocess. In contrast, the contents of the analytic process are subject to an incessant process of transformation (Green 2005). The author goes on to enumerate various components of the analytic setting: the nonhuman, object relational, and the analyst's “person” (including mental functioning). An extended clinical vignette is offered as an illustration.     

Residues in the analyst of the patient's symbiotic connection at a somatic level: unrepresented states in the patient and analyst

This paper discusses the residues of a somatic countertransference that revealed its meaning several years after apparently successful analytic work had ended. Psychoanalytic and Jungian analytic ideas on primitive communication, dissociation and enactment are explored in the working through of a shared respiratory symptom between patient and analyst. Growth in the analyst was necessary so that the patient's communication at a somatic level could be understood. Bleger's concept that both the patient's and analyst's body are part of the setting was central in the working through.