ABSTRACT
In psychosomatic clinical practice, the work with the patient ranged “from the maternal function to psychoanalysis”. The therapist's maternal function is required with patients whose psychic apparatus has been overwhelmed by traumas, thus making the full use of their mental functioning unavailable. The analyst then finds himself faced with an “operational” type of functioning, for defensive purposes, characterised by a very factual discourse centred on current events, while associative work remains quite limited and affects are massively suppressed. A major constituent of the maternal function is the “affective appreciation of the needs and desires of the infant in the light of the signals perceived with regard to deep identification with the mother, and the regulation of the times and modes of intervention or non-intervention at the levels of the multiple communications with the infant”. The therapist's role as a stimulus barrier and his attuned accompaniment of the patient makes it possible to bind stimuli into affects and representations.
