ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes certain points to help the reader grasp the originality of this situation. Submission to the fundamental rule is closely bound up with the acceptance of regression, which marks the originality of this mode of knowledge. The relaxation of defensive control goes hand in hand with its antagonist—that is, a certain restraint placed on regression in order to avoid slipping towards a mode of functioning perceived as psychotic, or towards acting out, which thwarts the work of elaboration. Defensive flexibility authorizes, and even espouses, progressive and retrogressive movements that facilitate the emergence of the transference. Alternating erotic and aggressive impulses punctuate the development of communication, the web of which has to be constantly untangled to reveal the movements of the unconscious. In fact, these movements of analytic communication must be understood as the expression of the oscillations of the transference: more precisely, of the tensions between the transference and the resistances.
