ABSTRACT
All reflection on the psychoanalytic process necessarily starts with the examination of its basic cell, namely, the analytic session”, Andre Green writes in Key Ideas for a Contemporary Psychoanalysis. The dynamics of working space are operative in both members—both individually and between them—and are at the heart of the process-based action which takes place dependent upon the communicational possibilities established by the encounter. This account of part of a pretty commonplace session leads to numerous remarks about a moment in the working-through process in a classic psychoanalytic treatment, the quality of which is bound up with the transference neurosis characterizing the patient’s mental functioning, and her “capacity to be alone” in the presence of the analyst. In other words the psychoanalytic work is joint work governed by the principles stated earlier, on the one hand, the patient’s free association and, on the other, the analyst’s free-floating attention.
