ABSTRACT
The particularity of the psychoanalytic encounter is that it is not only random, but also an experience that is out of the ordinary for both of the partners involved. Whenever a person goes to see a psychoanalyst to speak with him of the wounds to his soul, his fundamental malaise, it is with the hope that the suffering caused by the difficulties he has in managing his conflicts will be sympathetically received and recognized. From the preliminary encounters onwards, the analyst endeavours, on the basis of the manifest discourse addressed to him, to build up a picture of the modes of communication and relationship associated with the economic organisation of the patient’s mental functioning. This series of initial encounters—forming the necessary prelude to the decision to undertake psychoanalytic work—helps launch the activity of the analytic process for both protagonists.
