ABSTRACT
Pichon-Riviere’s formulations concerning the analytic process as “spiral process” date back to the years between 1954 and 1958 in the intellectual evolution of the author. Pichon-Riviere’s conception of the analytic process as a “spiral process” is the synthesis of a body of ideas that includes his study of psychoanalytic technique and especially his studies on transference. Spiral process designates a specific dialectic of the analytic approach to temporality. The “bipersonal field” attempts to describe more accurately the structure and dynamic of the analytic situation, focusing not on the whole of its development throughout an analytic treatment, but on smaller temporal entities: one session, or a part of it, or a group of sessions. The analytic situation itself has to be understood as a structured whole whose dynamic derives from the interaction of its parts and from the effect of the analytic situation on both, in reciprocal causation.
