ABSTRACT
The author considers the concept of the telescoping of generations as a specific concept of psychoanalytic experience, a psychoanalytic clinical concept. The telescoping of the generations concerns unconscious narcissistic alienating identifications. The clinical conditions that are necessary for facilitating the revelation of unconscious identifications bound up with a history condensing three generations. These clinical conditions constitute in turn the criterion which allows us to consider the psychoanalytic pertinence of the concept of the telescoping of generation. Respect for the psychoanalytic method, which permits the unconscious identifications linked to the telescoping of generations to emerge in the transference, is a necessary criterion for defining the telescoping of generations as a psychoanalytic concept. The interrogation implies a virtual point which designates, beyond the presence of the official protagonists, that of an included third which excludes momentarily the analyst. This interpretation is made possible by the discrepancy between the analyst's counter transference and the patient's manifest discourse.
