ABSTRACT
This chapter explains to develop some aspects of the concept of linking by focusing on the psychical reality which is proper to it. This approach differentiates the psychoanalytical conception of linking from all other ways of conceptualising it, psychosocial, sociological, and anthropological. The chapter describes the concept formations of the unconscious that result specifically from the relations, and especially the unconscious alliances, for they are the principal formations of the psychical reality proper to linking and to intersubjectivity. The concept of metapsychical framework is not only relevant to the analysis of linking. It is also useful for thinking about the organisation and functioning of the subject's psyche considered in its singularity. The metapsychical formations that frame psychical formations and act as the framework and guarantor of psychical life are supported by other frameworks and guarantors that are social and metasocial, cultural and metacultural.
