ABSTRACT
The psychoanalytic office is necessarily accompanied by its own peculiar tensions and seeming contradictions. On the one hand, it is a place of sanctuary, away from the dictates and impositions of life, and a space that within its frame of the 50-minute hour approximates a timeless state of free association. On the other hand, the psychoanalytic office along with its office holder is continually aging and inevitably will cease to exist (Nass, 2015). This is the legacy of Freud’s office, and its shadow continues to follow us. Part of the art of the analyst, reflected in their space, is to hold the press of these polarities in a dialectical embrace.
