ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysts would argue that the major constraint in all this comes from the unconscious: that is, that the apparent freedom of choice available to the patient is belied by the urgency of speaking of certain things in certain ways. This urgency is driven from the depths, from an area outside the control of the speaking subject. It is not, therefore, the analytic situation that places a limit on freedom, but the actuality of human subjectivity. The patient's freedom is limited to speech or non-speech within the analytic hour, if it were not so, the patient's freedom would not be in the context of a game, but in 'real life'. Then it would cease to be play; it would be psychosis, a narcissistic disorder in which the patient labours under the belief that there is no need to take account of reality or if the analyst were to become actively involved in the patient's fantasy life, it would be abuse.
