ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies three basic elements, or factors, of any psychoanalytic experience: meeting, telling, and parting. It suggests that the analytic process is the result of their interweaving and interaction and that these elements must always be at work in any experience that is to be considered psychoanalysis. The analytic tale is a particular form of narration. Its importance was stressed in psychoanalysis right from its beginnings: "talking cure", chatting around the fire. Psychoanalysis should provide us—as in fact it already does—with a technical instrument that fulfils three basic conditions. The establishment of a relationship in which patient and analyst are emotionally involved. A situation in which both analyst and patient can recognize themselves as separate individuals. A situation that makes both participants aware of the experience they are living through, rendering it explicit in the conversation between them.
