ABSTRACT
A vast psychoanalytic literature exists today prescribing how to help a patient make use of the analytic situation and process. In the British Psycho-Analytical Society there is a third tradition: namely that of D. W. Winnicott and M. Balint. Winnicott had emphasized the necessity of management in the regressed and borderline cases, before interpretations can be muta-tively effective. Balint had recommended the creation of an unobtrusive clinical ambience to establish a climate of trust with the patient. Everything comes under ego-control, and thus becomes related to secondary processes'. Describing an infant’s way of relating to the spatula in the consultation situation, Winnicott describes ‘a phase of hesitance’ that intervenes between the infant’s attraction to the spatula and his final acceptance of it. The function of secretiveness is not only to protect the Self from impingements that the growing but vulnerable ego cannot cope with, but also to protect the significant care-taking persons in the child’s familial environment.
