ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes her concept of “taking the transference”. She outlines a model for conceptualizing the process of establishing a “containing object” in the mind of the analysand throughout the course of analysis. The author attempts to demonstrate, through the presentation of detailed vignettes, some of the ways in which the analytic process may fail or succeed, highlighting the import of the analyst’s capacity for “reverie,” “transformation,” and “publication”—all aspects of the containing function. She expands upon W. R. Bion’s work with a discussion of the essentials of “taking the transference” and differentiates between two main dimensions of interpretation, “projective” and “introjective.” In his theoretical papers, Bion intentionally left his concepts “unsaturated”—full of gaps or perhaps, more accurately, open spaces to be filled in, not by each individual analyst’s paramnesias, but by her own individual thoughts derived from the process of “learning from experience” in analysis.
