ABSTRACT
Both analyst and patient rely on the brick-and-mortar frame of the office in order for self and mutual regulation, a sense of order and structure, thinking, and refuge, as well as a sense of venturing into the unknown to be permissible. When both patient and analyst enter the physical space of the analytic setting, they are opening up to the potentiality of feeling intruded upon, unprepared, understood, unsafe, loved, confused, supported, held, or many of the myriad dynamical phenomenon that constitute venturing into the analytic field. Our material space can function as an additional interpretive instrument that facilitates unconscious psychic work in both analyst and patient. The end of the hour means the patient must leave the setting, walking through the door that partitions the “world out there” into chronicity different from interior analytic time.
