ABSTRACT
In his paper, “Metapsychological and clinical aspects of regression within the psycho-analytical set-up”, D. W. Winnicott first discusses the concept of the analytic setting, along with his ideas about regression to dependence. Papers like “Primitive emotional development” and “Psychoses and child care” argue compellingly for a theory of the environment as, at the beginning, inseparable from the individual’s developmental advance and failure. A. Green evocatively describes the troubles within the psychotherapy of those patients who cannot take for granted the benign constancy of the psychoanalytic setting. The setting is either one of absolute emptiness or of certain impingement. It is not a space of potential. In working with this kind of psychological trouble, the analyst must attend carefully from the beginning to the task of facilitating the development of a truly psychoanalytic setting, but in a way that also attends to the patient’s vulnerabilities.
