ABSTRACT
Winnicott’s “three psychoanalyses” give a theoretical background for psychoanalytic treatments that remain for long periods and with some patients, focused on a particular level of mental functioning, what I call a configuration. Other therapeutic processes show, at certain moments, the transition from one configuration to another that is emerging or had only been weakly invested up to then. These views are consistent with Loewald’s perspective, insisting on the different “Ego-reality” levels and the importance of the mobility between them. From a different perspective, Roussillon, considering “the transitional construction of ‘external reality’”, concludes that the path followed by perception through the different systems gives rise to various realities.
The configurations are organized by “attractors”, and their stability relies on both dynamic and static factors: the fluidity of their investment and the body-centred Freudian Ego supported by the cognitive dimensions of language. This “polytopic” model of course modifies the dynamic and economic perspectives.
