A Flexible Frame: Holding the Patient in Mind

ABSTRACT

The author questions the classical psychoanalytic frame as the basis for the analytic container. The history of the concept of the frame and its purpose are reviewed. Five clinical vignettes where the therapy takes place outside the boundaries of the traditional frame (through email, text, or phone) are offered. In each vignette, the patient felt held in mind and valued in a way not accessible during the session, even after many years of treatment. The author questions whether therapy that takes place only within the analytic frame can help the patient who has never felt held in mind by a parental figure. The author acknowledges that the current culture of psychotherapy is changing. She promotes a hermeneutics of trust over one of suspicion and encourages the modern therapist’s use of ancient cardinal virtues over a rule-bound psychotherapy.

KEY WORDS:

• Tony Bass
• enactment
• frame
• hermeneutics of trust versus suspicion
• C. G. Jung
• relational psychoanalysis

NOTE

References to The Collected Works of C. G. Jung are cited in the text as CW, volume number, and paragraph number. The Collected Works are published in English by Routledge (UK) and Princeton University Press (USA).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Betsy Cohen

BETSY COHEN, PhD, an analyst member and teacher at the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, is the author of The Snow White Syndrome: All about Envy (MacMillan, 1987). She’s also published several articles in Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche: “The Intimate Self-Disclosure,” “Emmanuel Levinas and Depth Psychotherapy,” “Jung’s Answer to Jews,” and “Dr. Jung and His Patients.” In 2010, she completed her PhD dissertation, “Welcoming Eros into Analysis,” using the ancient wisdom of Plato and the Song of Songs as instructive for contemporary psychoanalysis. Her paper “Tangled Up in Blue: A Revision of Complex Theory” appears in Why and How We (Still) Read Jung (Routledge, 2013). Her current interest is exploring how ancient wisdom can be incorporated into modern therapy.