ABSTRACT
A concept that has received wide currency in the treatment literature but little attention in the assessment literature is “frame.” Earlier terms, including the “analytic situation” (Greenson, 1967), the “contract” (Menninger and Holtzman, 1973), and the “psychoanalytic frame” (Bleger, 1967), have been used to describe what contemporary therapists now refer to as the “frame”; namely, the structural conditions that provide the framework for treatment to occur. It is widely agreed that the treatment process cannot proceed until the frame has been established (Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1992).
