ABSTRACT
The analytic setting or frame is generally thought to include the establishment and maintenance of the physical setting and of the psychoanalytic contract, which includes negotiation of the time, frequency of sessions, use of the couch and money, and the role of the analyst. Bleger described the psychoanalytic situation as consisting of phenomena that constitute a process which is what we study, analyse and interpret. Bleger gives the name 'symbiotic link' to the projection of the 'agglutinated nucleus' into a depository. He points out that at this level of functioning there is an urgent and indeed omnipotent need for depositories to feel safe. The sensory features of the analytic setting are most likely important to all patients. The importance of the somatic counter transference explained in the chapter was vividly brought home to me in my work with Ms D., an intelligent, attractive and professionally capable twenty-eight-year-old woman who was nevertheless very disabled emotionally.
