ABSTRACT
The function of containment is transposed to the analytic function, it is reciprocal and recursive. This chapter focuses on the kind of cooperation that exists at the basis of the function of containment, as it is there that we find the creativity of the analytic pair. It aims to explore how the function of containment develops, starting from a proto-container that registers the form of the "thing-in-itself" at sensory level. This form, representing a substrate in the normal mental functioning, emerges and becomes a key aspect in the analysis of patients with pockets of autistic withdrawal, where thinking seems to be enclosed in an area of concreteness that can hardly be transformed. In transforming the title "Communicating pictures" into "Communicating containers" the author considers again, from an aesthetic stance, the images and the bodily sensations that Elisa and she had shared, looking for some traces of the function of an effective psychic containment and mutual transformation.
