ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the concept of the analyst's receptivity from its origins in Sigmund Freud's theories, to its elaboration in the work of Theodor Reik and, finally, to Francesca Bion's contributions on this subject. Accordingly, since "no psychoanalyst goes further than his own complexes and internal resistances permit", it became necessary that the analyst was receptive to, and aware of, his unconscious reactions to the transference. Reik and Freud met in 1910 at the suggestion of Freud after having received Reik's doctoral dissertation, a psychoanalytic study of Flaubert, a meeting which for the 22-year-old Reik was "love at first sight". Freud dissuaded the young man from pursuing a medical education and instead encouraged him to continue with his interests in applied psychoanalysis. Bion believes that the container is an internalization of the relationship between the infant and its mother who is able to take in her baby's projective identifications and tolerate bearing these disowned experiences.
