ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the idea of ‘therapeutic space’ as described in different theories of psychotherapy. Therapeutic space is a space that aids a healing or developmental process. It refers to the setting but also includes the analysand-analyst relationship. The chapter discusses the most popular and well-known ideas and images of the therapeutic space that ‘survived’ in the social imagination and psychotherapy, such as containing space or holding space. It investigates the patriarchal discourse and historical contexts of depth psychology. The idea of space as feminine/maternal space seems to be a recurrent motif in psychoanalytic/psychotherapeutic thinking. Different models of psychotherapeutic thinking about space share certain features when it comes to describing therapeutic space. The image of therapeutic space as a maternal space is maintained as a dominant in post-Jungian therapies. Depth psychology’s fantasy about maternal space and identifying the containing space with a uterine space can be interpreted in terms of the objectivization of the feminine body.