ABSTRACT
this chapter addresses the issue of how development and derailment inform the nature of the dialogue between analysand and analyst in the opening phases of an analytic relationship. Ways of being together, which instruct and construct the who with the whom, emerge as a function of the analysand’s history and the analyst’s receptivity. The play mode selected by the analysand—perhaps it would be better to say used by the analysand—may be displacement, enactment, or interactive enactment. This predilection for the play mode is both a component of and distinct from the compelling issue of how to be together and toward what ends. Developmental experience, challenge, and compromise inform ways of being with as well as play mode use. This is probably true for both players in the analytic Spielraum. Increasingly, the child analyst comes to appreciate the necessity to accommodate to his analysand’s relational particularities and developmental necessities as well as to ascertain her playmode constraints and the developmental Anlagen of each. I have selected the opening phase from work that was originally conceptualized to be a “summer vacation support” but later developed into a four-year analytic venture.
