On the question of the internal frame

ABSTRACT

This paper attempts to expand José Bleger's classic, metapsychological descriptions of the psychoanalytic frame to formulate and emphasize the role of the analyst's internal frame in establishing a psychoanalytic observational perspective in the analytic situation. The rationale for doing so follows from clinical necessity, especially when working with patients and psychic organizations that are ‘beyond neurosis' and in non-traditional settings such as distance and telemetric analyses. Clinically speaking, in its most effective state, the analyst’s internal frame can inform the possibility of an observational vertex aimed at the intuitive grasp of psychic reality rather than a sense-based, empirical observation of parameters denoted by the elements of a consensually validatable social reality.

KEYWORDS:

• Frame
• setting
• metapsychology
• unstructured unconscious
• distance analysis
• telemetric treatments

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).zxz

Notes

1 For a recent article asserting the centrality of metapsychology for psychoanalysis, see Simpson (2022).

2 “ … the setting is considered as a psychoanalytic concept and not anymore as a description, no longer considered merely as a set of rules” (L. Bleger 2023, 23, original emphasis).

3 In this paper, I will use the terms interchangeably, in part for stylistic reasons and in part where the connotations of one or the other may seem more relevant. Since the emphasis in this paper is on the internal frame, I will tend to use the latter term as a default for Bleger’s encuadre.

4 Readers should be aware that many of the articles that attempt to explore the experience and effects of telemetric treatments necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic refer to changes in the setting, but use that term in its more limited, commonplace (administrative) sense, rather than in its full, Blegerian metapsychological meaning. This does not necessarily detract from the value of these articles, but it should at least raise questions about whether there are other, not yet considered implications in relation to the impact of the changes necessitated by telemetric treatment upon the non-commonplace dimensions of the setting that Bleger has called attention to.

5 In Bleger’s theory, all of our social institutions, including encuadre, form parts of our personality. He referred to these multiple, institutionally derived components of identity as “nuclei of personal identity”.

6 In regard to this dimension, Faimberg (2018) cautioned that the frame, an institution established for the purpose of psychoanalytic understanding, may, like all institutions, tend over time to negate itself by substituting for this original purpose its own survival as a raison d’être, thereby turning itself into mere ritual.

7 The italicization echoes Winnicott’s “The couch is the analyst’s lap or womb … ”, which Bleger (2013 [1967a]) refers to.

8 In the Spanish original this last phrase is “la indiferenciación cuerpo-espacio y cuerpo-ambiente” (Bleger 1967a, 247). The English version in IJP has “the body-space and body setting non-differentiation” (Bleger 1967b, 517), whereas the English translation of Symbiosis and Ambiguity has “the undifferentiation of body and space, and of body and environment” (Bleger 2013 [1967a], 239).

9 To understand this complex proposition offered by Bleger in a unique and unusual set of terms, readers should consult Churcher’s paper in this volume and the primary source in Bleger’s ([1967a] 2013) Symbiosis and Ambiguity.

10 Since it refers to the earliest phases of psychic development that probably reach back into fetal experience, I think it may be more akin to what Bion (1992) called proto-mental states.

11 About the patient, Mr A, Bleger (1967b) said “It was only with the ‘unfulfillment’ of his ‘ghost world’ that he was able to see that my frame was different from his, that even before the unfulfillment, his ‘ghost world’ already existed” (513).

12 In 1968, in Buenos Aires, when Bion was asked “What is your opinion of setting?” he offered a similar opinion: “I do not have any opinion about setting. What concerns me is to be allowed to give interpretations” (Aguayo, Pistina de Cortinas, and Regeczkey 2018, 126). Bion felt that offering interpretations related to unconscious content and processes was at the heart of the analyst’s work task and that certain minimum requirements had to be met in order for him to be able to do so. These included such things as the patient’s continuing the sessions, allowing him to be silent until he had something to say, his not being physically threatened by the patient bringing a loaded gun to sessions, etc. If these conditions were not being met, he said that he would try to call this to the patient’s attention and set limits. In doing so, the principle he would follow would be to institute rules that would protect his minimal working conditions while not overly constricting the thoughts or emotions of either participant (i.e. “leave room for wild thoughts”).

13 For a further discussion, see Perelberg (2017).