ABSTRACT
In all spheres of psychoanalysis the treatment process is governed by the parameters within which it takes place. The climate of classical analysis is not the same as that of focal therapy and so on. It was in an outpatient environment that psychoanalytic techniques were first developed, mainly in private practice. Principles such as the basic rule and the rule of abstinence were instated. The non-institutional setting perfectly matched the new strategy as it unfolded, offering what de Schwaan (1978) has described as: ‘a zero social situation, an experimental area where transference is free to manifest itself as the unadulterated product of psychical forces within the patient’.
