ABSTRACT
Bion has captured the concept of the frame in his metaphor of the artist in whose painting "something has remained unaltered and on this something recognition depends". Clinically the analyst is the repository of the patient's frame, which may conflict with the specific analytic "frame". During the beginning of an analysis, the earliest manifestations of frame pathology are experienced by the analyst in the sense that the patient insists on disavowing, on symbiotic relatedness, on sameness, on need-satisfaction, or on "perfect symmetry". Frame pathology, in the sense given by Arvanitakis, is observed in some pre-psychotic and many psychotic ego-structures. The global non-verbal aspects of the patient-analyst relationship are reflected in the frame, which defines the "screen" or the potential space out of which the patient projects his intrapsychic fantasy. The management of the frame generates projective identification and introjective identification of both patient and analyst, which causes disturbances and influences the "fit".
