ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors elaborate on seven essential concepts they believe to be representative of Milner’s view of clinical psychoanalysis. The concepts are illusion, fantasy, framing, concentration, absentmindedness, ecstasy, and reverie, and have been read in the light of the process that from identification leads to symbolization, which parallels the transition from the primary to secondary objects. The authors argue that these concepts represent Milner’s contribution to the exploration of the mental state of the analyst at work, which Freud described as evenly suspended attention. The semantic areas covered by those concepts overlap and each concept has a circular relationship with the others, so the reader should see them as seven facets of the same object: the ‘analytic object,’ in Milner’s mind.
