In Praise of Framing

Abstract

What identifies psychoanalytic work and its resignation of authoritarianism and the use of manipulation as a technique is the existence of certain rules expressed in the constitution of a setting. These rules basically originate in the genius, experience and personality of Freud who formulated them including an elasticity that enables the possibility of variations. The setting may be considered in a strict sense (rules on the behaviour in the sessions) or in a wide sense (theoretical and meta-psychological concepts). In both cases the psychoanalyst‟s personality and experience are important so that we can refer to an ideal setting, the one displayed in the texts and a real setting, the varieties that each psychoanalyst applies in each situation. The importance of the setting‟s content is to build up similar working situations, to make the analyst‟s job easier, to avoid manipulation of the patient, to make analytic processes comparable between each others. Nevertheless, apart from the content is its importance as a rule that is alternately followed or ignored. It is precisely for being a rule that it acquires an ethic value, that it starts a communication with freedom and promotes that innovations are exposed having as a reference a third kind of setting: that of the psychoanalytic institution so that they become legitimate.