ABSTRACT
The term, present formulation, hails from Samuel Beckett. Conceptually, the present formulation is derived simply. The present formulation attempts to capture the momentary edge of such divides, from within a discrete extended moment in time, lasting fifty minutes. Its narrative bricolage, ranging from the banal to the sublime, is thick and idiosyncratic, leading not so much to answers as to potentially productive questions. Each present formulation saturates, as Wilfred Bion puts it, experience: limiting it, directing attention to the limitation and wrestling what was preconception into a potential offering to the patient for useful realisation. Each present formulation is therefore a nudge, a pushing back not as counter-resistance but as developmental challenge, the analyst’s attitudinal compass. The plodding along as one suggests a continuum from single consultative session to intensive psychotherapy. Presiding over the conduct of inquiry, the therapist’s necessary clinical response, antiphonal with the patient’s presentation, is the present formulation, the analyst’s attempt at linking, of how it is.
