ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the idea that container-contained configurations represent emergent relational capacities occurring in different areas of a multi-dimensional analytic field. It explores the idea that containment systems exist as mutated functions at different levels of emotional experience, with all having in common the function of negotiating the pulse of "sameness" and "difference", symmetries and asymmetries, in the analytic field. The chapter also explores containment systems as they exist at three levels: non-symbolic, pre-verbal, and symbolic. It also discusses psychoanalytic concepts using non-linear thinking may amount to rather dry theoretical abstractions, experience-distant and difficult to realize or use in clinical work. Non-symbolic activities in the field involve the pre-reflective processing of sensory patterns or gradations of continuous experience through perceptual, affective, and motoric channels. Symbols emerge out of the analytic couple's ability to tolerate negative capability long enough so as to allow the "selected fact" to emerge.