ABSTRACT
The task of the analyst is to create and maintain the analytic atmosphere, setting, and frame and to facilitate the progress of the analysis so that the "analytic passion play" can optimally and effectively take place. In the course of the analysis he—not unlike Michelangelo—finds himself intuitively penetrating the raw undeveloped stone in which his analysands are imprisoned and seeks to release their "forgotten" as well as their yet-to-be developed selves from their imprisonment. Ultimately, the analyst is revealed to be a veritable channel between the analysand and the analysand's own unconscious as well as to his own (reverie). In establishing the rules of the frame and in the analysand's acceptance of them, analyst and analysand are establishing a covenant that binds each participant to the task of protecting the "third"—the analytic procedure itself.
