ABSTRACT
The setting of psychotherapy is the basic physical-structural context of the treatment experience. Although the setting is inanimate and usually relatively unchanging, its form and management conveys a great deal about the therapist as perceived by the patient consciously and especially unconsciously. In general, therapists who offer secured settings tend to secure the other ground rules of therapy. Clinical precepts are developed with regard to frame-related intervening in and solving of frame problems as they arise in both private practice and clinic settings. The unconsciously validated, ideal setting for a psychotherapy experience entails a location in a professional building at some distance from the therapist’s residence—if possible, each should be located in a different town or section of a city. The office is used exclusively by a single therapist, and the waiting-room is private and not used by anyone else, professional or otherwise, even when the therapist is not in the office.
