ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the 'entrance' of conscious and unconscious elements before, or on the threshold of, the analyst and prospective patient's first consultation meeting. It demonstrates how the opening scene may be a first configuration created by the enactment of those central unconscious dynamics, brought by the patient to the anticipated meeting, and the impact of this on the analyst. The chapter describers how, before actual meetings, fantasy elaborations in the minds of both analyst and prospective patient begin to create the opening scene phenomena. Something is forcefully projected into the situation and the analyst's anticipation of the relationship. The image of a 'very important referral' flatters and pressures the analyst, who is at once occupied by a wish to live up to expectations and a fear that she might disappoint. It is feasible that the embryonic initiation of an analytic process has a distant heritage.
