SOLANO AND QUAGELLI

ON “FREE ASSOCIATIVE ACTIVITIES”

ON “FREE ASSOCIATIVE ACTIVITIES”

Paola Solano
Luca Quagelli

Free association has been at the heart of the analytic process for
decades, though nowadays the work with borderline and psychot‑
ic mental functioning has become more common. We discuss and
compare contributions from the Kleinian and the French psycho‑
analytic models regarding the role of free association and the ana‑
lyst when working with these disorders. Drawing on case material,
we suggest a broader conceptualization of free association—free
associative activities—which encompasses communications that
cannot be expressed through verbal modes because of their primi‑
tiveness. Their working through in the analytic couple could al‑
low a first representation of unsymbolized early psychic traumas.

Free association has been at the heart of the psychoanalytic pro-

cess since its very beginning as a grounding tool for the creative
activity of the mind. Freud (1900) believed that only through the
communication of the unconstrained flow of thought and the
ideas that seem to emerge “of their free will and of the abandon-
ment of the critical function that is normally in operation” (p.
102) could unconscious wishes could come to light. This was the
“fundamental rule of psychoanalysis” (Freud, 1911, p. 107), the
only one analysands “had to follow” (Freud, 1913, p. 135) dur-
ing treatment. However, contemporary contributions challenge
the importance of free association in clinical practice and Fonagy
declared in a recent IPA panel that “he was there to bury free as-
sociation and not to praise it” (McDermott, 2003, p. 1353), while
other authors underlined how the fundamental rule could be-
come a suffocating and detaching injunction to both analyst and
patient.
Nowadays, it has become more common to work with patients
with borderline and psychotic mental functioning, in which the
structure of thought and the thinking process are altered and
there is no differentiation between the conscious and the uncon-

Psychoanalytic Review, 102(2), April 2015 © 2015 N.P.A.P.

238 SOLANO AND QUAGELLI

scious, between sleeping and waking (Bion, 1962b). Symboliza-

tion is impaired to different degrees according to the state of the
ego’s relationships with its objects, ranging from areas of unrep-
resented mental states, voids and “psychic holes” (Green, 1993,
p. 146), to whole psychotic structures. Therefore, the method
of free association, conceptualized by Freud along with the first
topic (i.e., the unconscious, conscious, preconscious), when un-
conscious material was thought to correspond to repressed mate-
rial, appears of limited use. The need for getting in touch with
early psychic events, such as “amnestic memories” (Green, 2011,
p. xvi), whose traces were inscribed in the mind when the child
could hardly speak or even before (Freud, 1937), requires techni-
cal devices that could promote the development of the represen-
tative function where originally it could not develop.
In this paper, we argue that the concept of free association
could also be applied to expressive modes other than verbalized
material, such as sudden actions (Einfalle), affect foreclosure, mas-
sive projective identification, and even enactments recognizing
their communicative function. In the work with primitive mental
functioning, where the symbolizing function is not yet developed,
these phenomena could be the only way through which the mind
can communicate. We also suggest calling these phenomena “free
associative activities” and including them under a broadened um-
brella of free association. After a brief historical background on
the concept of free association as developed by Freud, we support
our suggestion of “free associative activities” by presenting and
comparing some contributions from the Kleinian and the French
psychoanalytic models concerning their work with nonsymbol-
ized mental areas. Drawing from case material, we will further
investigate the concept of “free associative activities” and its rel-
evance in clinical practice, together with some technical issues.

FREUD’S NOTION OF FREE ASSOCIATION

In “Studies on Hysteria” Freud (1895) began to acknowledge the

value of free association and gradually abandoned hypnosis. The
new method was then applied “to a large extent” (p. 105), first in
the case of “Frau Emmy von N.,” where he noticed that she “was
making use of our conversation, apparently unconstrained and
ON “FREE ASSOCIATIVE ACTIVITIES” 239

guided by chance, as a supplement of hypnosis” (p. 51). Then in

the case of “Miss Lucy R.,” where hypnosis failed, Freud (1895)
employed free association augmented with a “small technical de-
vice” (p. 270), a pressure on the patient’s forehead, to facilitate
the emergence of pathogenic memories. This device, however,
was soon discarded. In 1910, Freud referred to the method of free
association as “the main rule of psychoanalysis” (p. 33), though
the first regular description of it appeared in “The Dynamics of
Transference” (Freud, 1912a), where he states that “the fundamen-
tal rule of psychoanalysis lays it down that whatever comes into
one’s head must be reported without criticizing it” (p. 107). This
idea, however, is already present in The Interpretation of Dreams
(Freud, 1900), though less systematized. In “On Beginning the
Treatment,” Freud (1913) commented:

The fundamental rule of psychoanalytic technique, which the

patient has to observe, must be imparted to him at the very begin-
ning: “. . . what you tell me must differ in one respect from an or-
dinary conversation. Ordinarily you rightly try to keep a connect-
ing thread running through your remarks and you exclude any
intrusive ideas that may occur to you and any side issues, so as not
to wander too far from the point. But in this case you must pro-
ceed differently. You will notice that as you relate things, various
thoughts will occur to you which you would like to put aside on
the grounds of certain criticism and objections. . . . You must nev-
er give in to this criticism, but must say them in spite of them—in-
deed, you must say them precisely because you feel an aversion to
doing so. Later on you will find out and learn to understand the
reason for this injunction, which is really the only one you have to
follow.” (pp. 134–135).

However, early on in his clinical work Freud encountered differ-

ent resistances to the associative method, which led him to neces-
sitate a thorough study of analytic listening. This allowed the the-
orization and acknowledgment of the analyst’s “evenly suspended
attention” (Freud, 1912b, p. 111) as a key tool of the analytic pro-
cess. This analytic attitude, together with the patient’s free asso-
ciation, allowed the unfolding of repressed wishes and later the
resolution of infantile neurosis upon which the symptoms rested.
This mirrors the theoretical model of the first topic, where the
focus was on the content rather than on the process.
240 SOLANO AND QUAGELLI

Later, Freud noticed that this model of the mind allowed him
to develop only a partial understanding of his patients. Beginning
with “Mourning and Melancholia” in 1917 and afterward, with
the “turning point of the twenties” (Green, 1995), Freud devel-
oped a much more complex model of the mind, where the un-
conscious does not merely correspond to the repressed. Instead,
there is a nonrepresentative unconscious ruled by the repetition
compulsion and not by the pleasure principle. This, together with
his understanding of transference, allowed Freud to develop a
more comprehensive conceptualization of the analytic situation.
Memories, wishes, and thoughts were not simply conveyed to the
analyst by what the patient said, but also by what was happening
in the session, that is, by their being acted out. Therefore, free
association was not really “free” but determined by the repeti-
tion compulsion and acted out in the transference. Freud (1914)
wrote that “the patient does not say that he remembers he used to
be defiant and critical towards his parents’ authority; instead he
behaves in that way to the doctor . . . as long as the patient is in
treatment he cannot escape from this compulsion to repeat; and
in the end we understand that this is his way of remembering” (p.
150). Here, we can already find a hint of a new analytic attitude
where form as well as content had to be listened to, both being
ways of communicating.
However, Freud’s theorization of a repetition that could also
include unrepresented material and other theoretical advances of
the second topic (i.e., id, ego, superego) were not followed by any
further technical developments (Roussillon, 1995). Freud kept
faith in the method of free association until the end of his writ-
ings, leaving the task of developing a theory of presymbolic mate-
rial emerging in sessions to the following generations, together
with an approach to analytic listening that allows nonrepresented
mental states to find a first representation.

DIFFERENT MODELS OF THE MIND

In the wake of Klein’s (1946) theory of early object relations,

anxieties, and projective identification, Bion (1962a) developed
a theory of thinking that had profound effects both on the con-
ceptual and technical repertoire of psychoanalysis. Thoughts
ON “FREE ASSOCIATIVE ACTIVITIES” 241

and thinking, the latter being developed “by the pressure” (Bion,
1962a, p. 179) of the former, were to be considered separately.
Psychopathology could derive from the altered development of
each or both. The development of thoughts and thinking involves
both the infant’s capacity for tolerating frustrations and his or
her early relationship with his or her object. The capacity for tol-
erating frustrations, such as the experience of an absent breast
(realization of “no breast”) allows the development of a thought,
thus avoiding paranoid anxieties. Furthermore, thinking has a
deep relational quality since it derives from the early experience
of the relationship with an object capable of receiving, tolerating,
transforming, and eventually giving back projected anxieties in a
more tolerable form. Through the repeated experience of being
contained, the infant can introject not only what was contained,
but also the containing object itself together with his or her alpha
function. This enables the mind to contain its own anxieties, to
think, to symbolize, and to develop a differentiation between the
conscious and unconscious. For a normal development to take
place, Bion (1962a) underlined the importance of the mother’s
capacity for reverie, that is, “a state of mind which is open to the
reception of any ‘object’ from the loved object and is therefore
capable of the reception of the infant’s projective identifications
whether they are felt to be good or bad” (p. 36). Thus, Bion con-
ceptualizes thinking not as an abstract mental process, but as a
human link and emotional experience of trying to know oneself
or someone else (O’Shaughnessy, 1981). The sense of internal ex-
perience is conveyed through a deep and intimate relationship be-
tween two minds working together and communicating through
preverbal expressive modes.
However, these preverbal expressive modes persist in different
degrees where no sufficient containment had taken place. The
alpha function, when present, is attacked and evacuated, leaving
behind an absence of symbolic thought, which is reflected in the
absence of associative productions (Bion, 1992)—what might be
called an absence of “psychic generativity” (Green, 1992, p. 586).
In such primitive areas there is no differentiation between the
conscious and unconscious as well as no access to symbolization,
and language loses its function of supporting symbolic thinking.
The stage of naming with the subsequent verbalization cannot be
achieved, and the patient is confronted with unspeakable “name-
242 SOLANO AND QUAGELLI

less dreads” (Bion, 1962a, p. 96) or “primitive agonies” (Winn-

icott, 1974, p. 88).
This requires some metapsychological considerations about
the “communicative” modes through which the unsymbolized
emerges in sessions together with some possible adaptations of
the analyst’s free-floating attention.
In these clinical situations, the communicative properties of
verbalized material and of free association have to be carefully
considered, since words can serve different purposes, including
providing “more an opaque screen than a link enabling commu-
nication” (Bion, 1979, p. 467). Thus, the very function of lan-
guage can be perverted, and language—paradoxically—becomes a
defensive tool against true expression and symbolization! There-
fore, verbalizing and associating do not always mean thinking
(Bronstein, 2002). Hence, we can recognize “words” and “beyond
words communication” (O’Shaughnessy, 1982, p. 139), which can
often be detected in the transference. “Beyond words communi-
cation,” using more primitive modes of communication, enable
more primitive aspects of the patient to be expressed in treat-
ment, whereas words can reflect a primitive defensive organiza-
tion (O’Shaughnessy, 1982, p. 139). Free association can be used
to saturate the analyst’s mind and at the same time foster a hidden
process of “denudation” (Bion, 1962a, p. 96) of the analytic ex-
perience. Similarly, though using a different model of the mind,
McDougall (1978) describes situations in which language is used
“as an act” (p. 178) and has little in common with the language of
free association. In such cases, the manifest communication does
not allow the uncovering of any unconscious scenario (e.g., per-
taining to infant sexuality), but appears empty and “meaningless
at all levels” (p. 177) to the analytic ear. At the same time, howev-
er, the analyst often feels disturbed or unbalanced, and his or her
capacity to think is put at stake by “something” (p. 178) that re-
sembles more a baby’s desperate cry than actual communication.
Despite the comprehensive understanding of these processes
in international psychoanalytic literature, some open questions
still remain. When and why do these breaks in associative think-
ing happen? Can what we shall call “words-as-acts” be better un-
derstood in transference–countertransference dynamics? Even-
tually, how should analysts modify their listening when working
with these mental states?
ON “FREE ASSOCIATIVE ACTIVITIES” 243

Green (2000b) thoroughly investigated “the moments in the

session when the patient suddenly turns his back on the entire
process of thought” (p. 753) and destructive forces prevail, anni-
hilating any psychic generativity. At first, the sudden wiping out
of free associative thinking was related to a massive and extensive
repression, which was later understood to be “rather a potential
excess of associations. The more the patient continued talking,
the more he felt in danger, because the communication between
the parts of his discourse was not sufficiently watertight. He was
speaking as if he were trying to avoid an outcome towards which
he would have been pulled irresistibly had he let himself go” (p.
756).
McDougall (1989) described a similar mechanism—affect fore-
closure—employed by patients who during the session strive to
expel from the body (e.g., through panting) painful mental expe-
riences resulting from the analytic work. Green (1993) also sug-
gests that through the reciprocal echoing of these emotional ex-
periences new affective links could be established, leading to the
reactivation and integration of denied and split traumatic traces.
However, this process, because of its intense emotional impact,
would be perceived by the patient as a psychic catastrophe and as
such has to be prevented at all costs. Therefore, as soon as there
is a chance for such connections to be established—something ex-
pected also by the analyst—powerful negative hallucinations take
place. These negative figures attack and annihilate the apparatus
for thinking (le pensoir), thus preventing the development of an
associative network between the multiple traumatic experiences.
This leads us to consider how the traces of early traumatic ex-
periences are inscribed in the mind. In a letter to Fliess on De-
cember 6, 1896, Freud (1896) describes a model for memory, ac-
cording to which every event has “at least a triple registration” (p.
234). In addition to the better known thing-presentation (Sachvor‑
stellung) and word-presentation (Wortvorstellung), Freud theorized
the existence of a third early registration called “indication of
perception” (Freud, 1896, p. 234), arranged according to associa-
tion by simultaneity and contiguity. Though still present in The
Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900), registrations of “indication
of perception” are apparently overlooked in Freud’s subsequent
work, being simply differentiated from other UCS representative
traces because of the degree of cathexis.
244 SOLANO AND QUAGELLI

According to the first topic, symbolization derives from the

need to mourn the “primary object” (identity of perception) and
the acceptance to remain with the identity of thought, that is, with
its representation. Therefore, implied in representation there is
at the same time the acceptance of the absence/loss of the ob-
ject and its healed presence (Roussillon, 1999). The difference
between perception and representation would be just a matter of
“libidinal retention,” where, according to the first topic, a com-
plete cathexis of perceptual traces would lead to a hallucinatory
actualization of the previous experiences and a partial cathexis
(in quantitative terms) would transform a hallucinatory actualiza-
tion into representation. Thus, “representation would simply de-
rive from the action of a ‘no’ . . . , which halts the search of the
identity of perception” (Roussillon, 1999, p. 223). Therefore, the
object would be the most replaceable part of the drive and its loss
would not cause any problem.
However, this theory of symbolization is uncertain when ap-
plied to narcissistic-identitarian sufferings, in which the process
of mourning does not proceed smoothly and the object is not
easily replaceable because in order to replace it the mind must
be able to represent the object, which has to be given up. This
leads to a paradoxical closed circuit: “To symbolize the lost object
it is necessary to mourn it, but to be able to mourn the object it
must have been represented and symbolized” (Roussillon, 1999,
p. 223). This unsolvable contradiction led different authors to
consider the importance of early perceptual traces and to identify
different kinds of them, for example, formal signifiers (Anzieu,
1990), demarcation signifiers (Rosolato, 1985), and pictograms
(Aulagnier, 1975).
We suggest that indications of perception, being formed by raw
proto-emotions and potential representations, could have a pivot-
al role in differentiating repressed from what we could call never-
symbolized experiences. While the former could be symbolized
before being repressed, the latter—because of their traumatic na-
ture—could not reach symbolization and remained in the psyche
in negative, as voids. These “traces of no-traces” (Press, 1997, p.
50) pertain to the patient’s historical reality (Freud, 1938; Roussil-
lon, 1991) beyond phantom and projective dynamics because of
their relationships with the quality of the object’s early response.
Therefore, during the session, mechanisms such as affect fore-
ON “FREE ASSOCIATIVE ACTIVITIES” 245

closure and phobia of thinking could be a way through which

the patient tries to avoid the repetition of an early experience of
“no experience” with the object, when “nothing happened when
something might profitably have happened” (Winnicott, 1974, p.
106). In order to avoid the overwhelming psychic pain of these
never-symbolized experiences, the patient tries to get rid of any
capacity to think by discharging it through actions or the body
(e.g., tics, somatizations, or other kinds of motor discharge can
occur in the session). Thus, acting would resemble mere emo-
tional discharge resembling Green’s (1993) excorporation, that
is, a sort of early projection taking place before the boundaries
between ego and non-ego, inside and outside, are established. In
these psychic areas, the subject perceives that there is no object
in which to project into and emotions are simply “expelled as far
away as possible” (Green, 1993, p. 272), without—apparently—any
communicative purpose. This fosters the historical dichotomy be-
tween thought and action, that is also supported by the psycho-
analytic device where actions occur only through language (trans-
ference on language; Green, 1993).
However, recent understanding bridges thought and action
by recognizing a possible linking function and communicative
property even in the latter. For instance, “rememorative actions
can allow the remembrance of what has never been historicized”
(Roussillon, 1991, p. 172) since “actions entail a memory and a
degenerated proto-narration of pre-verbal experiences and of
archaic modes of relating” (Roussillon, 2009, p. 23). We should
remember that preverbal memories also in normal psychic de-
velopment are registered as body sensations, and only some of
them will be later put into words. Other preverbal memories will
occur “beyond words,” such as in the prosody of speech or in
the expressive mode. Therefore, it is paramount not to limit the
focus to the verbalized content of the talk and consider actions
not only from an intrapsychic point of view, but also from a more
relational one. According to this perspective, actions could be ei-
ther a mere emotional discharge precluding any form of thinking
(intrapsychic perspective) or the desperate cry of a baby/mind
calling for another mind able to recognize and receive its commu-
nication in order to develop a first representation. When there is
no internal object capable of receiving what comes to be excorpo-
rated, the external object can still receive and detoxify the excor-
246 SOLANO AND QUAGELLI

porated material. Thus, when there is no differentiation between

inside/outside and subject/object, the quality of the response of
the external object appears to be fundamental, and the therapeu-
tic relationship, in order to allow the development of “absence,”
has to carefully consider what happens in the presence of the
object (Winnicott’s paradoxical solitude).

CASE MATERIAL

Drawing from the case of a young girl, Miss B, we further exam-

ine the work with unrepresented areas to support our suggestion
for the conceptualization of “free associative activities.” We focus
on some material from the first years of treatment, when Miss B
could communicate mainly through nonverbal modes. Miss B’s
psychoanalytic psychotherapy had the frequency of twice a week
in a vis-à-vis setting.
Miss B came for treatment in a desperate state. After severe
self-harm and suicidal ideation she had been hospitalized in a psy-
chiatric department and had just been discharged. At that time,
Miss B was fifteen years old, even though when we first met I
[PS] thought she looked much younger. For the first few months
of our work together, I continued to refer to her in my mind as
“the child,” and it was hard for me to think of her as a young
girl, though her way of talking sounded much older than her age.
On our first consultation, as soon as she sat down, she began to
talk automatically and said, “I have panic attacks, social phobia,
self-harming behavior—I often cut myself—and recurring suicid-
al thoughts, though I only attempted suicide once.” I felt that a
heavy load had just been thrown onto me and that at the same
time her using diagnostic labels emptied and froze the whole situ-
ation. She remained silent for the rest of the session, motionless
in her chair, staring at me. My efforts to put what I was feeling
and what I thought was going on between us into words were use-
less.
During the following months, Miss B talked very little, often
remaining silent and motionless for whole sessions. Gradually, I
noticed that she was staring through me as if I were made of
transparent glass she could look through. The few words she man-
aged to say were in a kind, light voice, and in my imagination they
ON “FREE ASSOCIATIVE ACTIVITIES” 247

came from a ceramic doll that she was hiding inside. My efforts
to put what I felt was happening between us into words were ei-
ther dismissed or kindly rejected by Miss B’s simply whispering,
“I don’t know . . .” and then remaining silent for the rest of the
session. When this happened, I felt as if what I had just tried to
put forward had been dissolved in a sort of foggy smoke that filled
the whole room, preventing any distinct vision.
When I told her this feeling, Miss B gave me an amused glance
and told me, “I don’t wear contact lenses even though my mother
thinks I do! She keeps on buying them for me because I regularly
run out of them. I throw them away so she won’t get suspicious!”
This was what was happening to our work. She continued saying
that despite her severe shortsightedness, she had always refused
to buy glasses because they made her look ugly, so she decided to
wear contact lenses instead. She said that extremely precise sight
disturbed her —something, I suggested, that she was not accus-
tomed to any more. She agreed and said that “when you get ac-
customed to seeing things in a softer way you can’t stand perfect
sight anymore!” I told her it was true, if one gets used to a softer
and foggy vision a more defined and clearer one can be very dis-
turbing. I told her that this had also much to do with the way she
perceived the world, which in her foggy vision probably appeared
softer, as she said, but also confused. All the limits were blurred
and dissolved, so objects and reality were quite undefined and it
was easy to isolate oneself in this sort of protective foggy dream
world. Miss B said thoughtfully that she had never thought about
it in this way, but added in a metallic voice, “This could be one
possible explanation.”
She had just pushed me aside, and I had to move on tiptoe as if
I had very precarious balance. On the one hand, I felt quite afraid
that I was risking too much intrusion into her world—one of Miss
B’s greatest anxieties—or becoming the mother from whom she
hid to throw away the “contact lenses.” However, on the other
hand I felt that by not showing her that we were actually speak-
ing of us would really spoil our work. I felt suspended, swinging
between these feelings, unable to work this through, as if my mind
were drowning in some swinging void where everything had be-
come blurred.
After some minutes, I could take a step back and look at what
was happening. I managed to tell Miss B that it was difficult to de-
248 SOLANO AND QUAGELLI

cide whether to continue having an isolating foggy vision, which

she probably felt safer with at the moment, or to wear contact
lenses and be in charge of looking at the outside world. Some-
times this doubt became so strong that she remained paralyzed,
swinging between the wish to remain in her foggy world and the
wish to make some contact with the outside and with me, though
she feared it a lot and it was difficult to take charge of such a step.
She looked interested and asked what I meant by “being paralyzed
and swinging at the same time.” I told her that sometimes she
remained paralyzed as if she did not know what to do, whether
to move outward or retreat inside herself. Miss B looked at me
with sad eyes, started to cry and said that she has never been able
to decide anything. I told her that she is very sad and frightened
and wonders whether to use our work/contact lenses to get bet-
ter vision or to throw our work away as she does with the lenses.
She looked at me sadly and remained in silence till the end of the
session. During the following months, Miss B was detached and
rarely spoke, as if our brief contact had vanished. However, she
never missed a session and was always on time. Once, near the
end of the first year of treatment, she told me that she had spent
some days at her father’s house, but that nothing special had hap-
pened. At that time, I only knew that her parents were divorced
because, apparently, I was not allowed to know anything more. I
tried to talk to Miss B about the days she spent with him, but she
soon got annoyed and became silent.
I often felt rejected, helpless, and secluded in a crystal sphere,
where I was isolated and could hardly breathe. I felt that I was
not even allowed to know whether she was continuing to harm
herself or not. I could only be worried about what I feared was
continuing to happen, without being able to do anything, which
was exactly what Miss B experienced. I kept on describing these
feelings to her, though struggling against feelings of being use-
less, ineffective, and unable to help her. Whenever I tried to put
something forward for us, I felt in advance that it would be use-
less and would just confirm and deepen my—and her—feelings of
helplessness and failure. Sometimes I felt angry, with an urge to
move or say something that could break the paralysis we were in,
but the more I tried the more I felt that the gap between Miss B
and me widened.
ON “FREE ASSOCIATIVE ACTIVITIES” 249

Once, midway through the second year of treatment, I suggest-

ed, as I had already done before, that in this way she wanted me to
experience and understand how much she was suffering and how
difficult life was for her. This time, unexpectedly, she glared at me
and said that she did not know what she wanted from me. I told
her that she looked annoyed by what I had said, but she remained
silent and continued to glare at me. I felt that the suffocating at-
mosphere was loosening and I could breathe more easily again. I
suggested that she had got so angry because she felt we had been
too close for a while and this frightened her a lot. I continued to
say that maybe she did not know herself how far away I should
stay. Miss B shouted angrily at me, “Can’t you simply stay where I
put you?” then glared angrily at me, remaining in silence for the
rest of the session as if I had dared too much.
The following session began as usual with Miss B looking
through me in silence. I tried to suggest that it was difficult to
begin and maybe on that day it was even more difficult because of
what had happened in the previous session. She remained silent,
looking through me. I felt cut-off and isolated in a parallel dimen-
sion. Where was the angry—and therefore lively and emotional—
Miss B now? My mind gradually began to wander, without being
able to think of anything, and then I felt speechless, imprisoned
in an empty mind. Suddenly, an image occurred in my mind: It
was of a cat trying to get a mouse out of a green glass bottle. I felt
some inner difficulty in putting it into words and wondered about
Miss B’s reaction to it. However, this image was the only thing I
had in my mind, so I tentatively put it forward. Miss B looked at
me with surprise and said in a witty tone: “It is difficult for both of
them. The mouse is imprisoned in the bottle, which at the same
time protects him. The cat goes crazy watching it move around
without being able to get at it and risks being harmed trying to
get the mouse out of it.” I agreed that it was a difficult situation
for both of them and it was not easy to decide what to do. I added
that it was a form of cruelty for the mouse to live in a bottle with a
cat staring at him all day long for years. She agreed and said that
it is very difficult to feel observed, but also even to be noticed. She
had always felt uneasy when she knew that someone saw her as
if she had something to be ashamed of, that she could not figure
out. She remembers that it was not easy for her to play the flute
250 SOLANO AND QUAGELLI

with her classmates at the Music School because she always felt
inadequate in some way or in the wrong place.
Suddenly, Miss B remembered a dream—the first she brought
up in therapy: She was at the train station waiting for a train. When
her train arrived, she tried to get on but could not walk out of the glass
house where she was waiting for it. Watching the train passing by she saw
there were some of her old classmates on it. Miss B continued to talk
about a trip she had made with her parents before the divorce.
They were at an amusement park, but when they were leaving
she missed the bus. She remembered seeing her mother’s figure
on the moving bus and herself running after it. Then, she went
back to the amusement park and hid inside a castle, one of the
attractions. She stayed there for hours pretending that she was
a princess who had to escape from the all the bad people look-
ing for her. The police found her some hours later. Then, Miss B
spoke of one of her former classmates, a girl with whom she used
to spend a lot of time after school and also some holidays. Miss B
looked sad while talking about her and told me that it was quite
a long time since they had met. Last year this girl tried to phone
her, but Miss B refused to talk to her because she felt ashamed of
herself and her situation. She feared that this girl would reject and
criticize her and that after all those years they probably did not
have much in common any more.
The session was finishing so I simply pointed out that there
were some separations she was very sorry about and that she
would like to reverse. However, I added, she was very frightened
by this and felt she had to prevent it at all costs. I linked it to our
difficulty in working together during the sessions and her need to
sometimes cut me off and seclude me in a frozen sphere where I
was helpless, as soon as we had gotten closer.
Gradually her look changed, she dyed her hair red and began
to wear colorful bracelets. Miss B became more and more able
to talk in sessions and to bring herself and her story to the treat-
ment, though still in her particular way. She was depressed and
sorely disappointed by her situation, for which she utterly blamed
herself. After the suicide attempt she had not recovered and could
not resume school. She gradually locked herself at home, being
too ashamed of herself to go out and meet her peers. She even
spent a month without being able to go out of her room when her
mother was at home. Her father had left home when Miss B was
ON “FREE ASSOCIATIVE ACTIVITIES” 251

nine and moved abroad. Ever since, Miss B refused to have any
contact with him, despite his trying to arrange short holidays with
her. She rarely spoke of him, and when the subject came up she
was very dismissive, saying that he was a very busy man who had
never had much time for her.
At that time, Miss B lived with her mother, whom she described
as an anxious intrusive businesswoman, who could not cope with
her husband’s decision to leave her. Miss B had often been the
scapegoat of her mother’s rage toward her father, and in the first
years after the divorce her mother used to blame her for the di-
vorce whenever she felt angry with him. However, Miss B’s mother
used to swing between rejecting her daughter and trying to merge
with her. Miss B said that her mother refused to stay away from
her for longer than requested by her work and felt abandoned
whenever Miss B went to the Music School or met friends. At the
same time, Miss B told me that she had always refused to sleep in
her own bed, and even before the divorce she used to sleep in her
parents’ bed with her mother while her father slept alone in an-
other room. She told me that when she was born her parents had
bought a cradle for her, which however was never used because
her mother felt safer keeping the baby close to her at night so that
she could always feel her warmth as before Miss B’s birth. Miss B’s
mother feared that the father could accidentally crush the baby
while sleeping, and so she decided that he had to sleep in another
room till Miss B grew up. Yet this never happened, and when Miss
B began therapy she was still sleeping with her mother in what,
at the beginning, was her parents’ bedroom, which became her
room. Miss B only allowed her mother to go into that room to
sleep and refused to have her mother’s clothes in the wardrobe
except for her mother’s wedding dress, which often appeared in
Miss B’s daydreams. The relationship between Miss B and her
mother worsened when her father told them that he had another
family abroad, including a son who was just two years younger
than Miss B. “To put it simply, he had always had a double life!”
said Miss B, in a mocking tone.
While telling me her story, her words were detached and even
sarcastic, so that I felt divided between shock and sadness for
what she was telling me and her carefree attitude, in a sort of
denial of what she was saying. I realized that Miss B’s words were
not telling me anything, because she was not always able to tell
252 SOLANO AND QUAGELLI

something to someone through verbal language. Instead, she

could only do what I imagined as “putting things—for example,
her story—in the space outside herself or in the room.” No inter-
action was expected, and I could “look at” what she was saying as
an uninvited spectator who happened to be there while she was
“putting out these things.” She did not always relate to me in this
way, and it gradually diminished.
Once, at the end of the second year of treatment, Miss B ar-
rived looking happy, wearing a yellow teeshirt with a smiling
candy printed on it. She sat in front of me and said that she did
not know what she could tell me. After a pause, I told her that
apparently she did not know what to tell me, but there was maybe
something new somewhere that made her happy and smile. I felt
as if what was in her mind when she came into the room had
been violently wiped out. I suggested that something had attacked
and dissolved what had made her happy and what she had to tell
me. She disagreed and remained silent. I felt puzzled; there was
a sense of immobility though Miss B was smiling and internally
glad of something. I felt as if there were two parallel tracks: one in
which she could be alive and even happy, and another where I was
secluded and paralyzed with her. There was no contact between
them. So I shared this image with her and she simply answered, “I
am going back to school!” She had planned to go back to school
in the following months and she told me she was excited to start
studying again, though she was a bit frightened of meeting her
new classmates. She was able to talk about her feelings and keep
good emotional contact with me during the session. She looked
like an adolescent dealing quite maturely with the normal feelings
aroused by the beginning of school. While in the presence of this
lively Miss B, I noticed that I tended to put aside the secluded
and suffering Miss B as if I were gradually trying to cut her off
in my mind, so I told her that we should try to keep both Miss Bs
in mind, without cutting the other off. She smiled. Three months
later Miss B managed to resume school.

SOME NOTES ON THE CLINICAL MATERIAL

Miss B presented a complex mental structure, in which a more

mature mental functioning coexisted with deep pockets of unsym-
ON “FREE ASSOCIATIVE ACTIVITIES” 253

bolized areas in a dissociated way. Therefore, her level of func-

tioning and consequently her way of relating to her objects could
rapidly shift even during the session and required the therapist to
keep both of them in mind in order to provide a first experience
of integration and be able to work at different levels. Further-
more, Miss B faced the typical anxieties of adolescence expressed
in her functioning. However, for the purpose of this paper, we
concentrate only on certain aspects of the case, namely, the ap-
proach and working through of Miss B’s unrepresented mental
areas and the split way in which they coexisted within a more
mature mental functioning.
At the beginning of her treatment, Miss B could not verbally
communicate her feelings and thoughts and could not free as-
sociate. She was stuck in an unsymbolized area of the mind that
paralyzed and isolated her in a frozen and timeless dimension,
where no thoughts could develop. Miss B could only communi-
cate through an intense projective identification, which, in a re-
versal from passive to active, made the therapist experience what
she suffered without being able to think it. This transference par
retournement (Roussillon, 1999, p. 14) is grounded on Freud’s
conceptualization of the “reversal mechanisms” (Freud, 1915, p.
126), which are much more primitive than repression and do not
have a function pertaining to wish fulfillment. They rather allow
fragments of the patient’s “historical truth” (Freud, 1937, p. 267)
to emerge and be reconstructed in the treatment. Miss B’s treat-
ment required a continuous process of working through an often
painful and paralyzing countertransference, which violently put
at stake the therapist’s capacity to think and sense of professional
and personal identity. The therapist was confronted with massive
phenomena of affect foreclosure because Miss B often could not
even remember what had happened in the previous sessions; for
quite a long time every session was apparently the first one. Any
contact or transformative development was systematically anni-
hilated by destructive forces, dissolved in blankness caused by a
massive work of the negative (Green, 1993).
Miss B’s deep desperation took the form of cruel attacks, but
the therapist’s tentative verbalization or attempts to interpret this
aggressiveness did not produce any emotional contact in the ses-
sion, but rather widened the gap between them. Miss B perceived
any transference interpretation and any simple referral to the cur-
254 SOLANO AND QUAGELLI

rent therapeutic situation as an intrusive and possibly destructive

attack, resulting in an even deeper withdrawal. It became clear
that within this functioning Miss B could not have any emotional
understanding of her own aggressiveness toward the object, be-
cause her boundaries between herself/outside world, subject/ob-
ject, were not yet developed. Miss B’s incapacity to tolerate a bet-
ter vision of the external world where the boundaries between the
objects and herself are clearly defined concretely expresses the
state of her inner world, where no transitional area developed.
In this omnipotent phantasy, which reflects a primal failure in
the meeting with an object who could not imaginatively elaborate
and mirror her mental states (Winnicott, 1960), the object/thera-
pist was perceived as part of the self, and any sense of “other-
ness” had to be violently denied. Thus, Miss B had never had the
experience of “seeing herself through being seen by the object”
(Winnicott, 1971, p. 151) and could not develop any sense of me-
ness. Through a careful analysis of the countertransference, the
therapist had to think and feel “for” Miss B, rather than “with”
her, to provide a first experience of a holding capable of fostering
the development of a framing structure (structure encadrante)
(Green, 2000a, p. 103) from which a first sense of me-ness could
develop. At the beginning of her treatment, Miss B could not be
reached by any verbal interpretation of her destructiveness be-
cause she could not recognize the reality of the object as external.
Only through the experience of an object who survived her de-
structiveness could Miss B acknowledge the otherness of the ob-
ject, something she clearly conveyed when she screamed: “Can’t
you simply stay where I put you?” Henceforth, Miss B could begin
to acknowledge the existence of an external world and “look at”
instead of “look through” the object. In order to be “found,” the
reality of the object/therapist had to be “destroyed,”—that is, in
order to be recognized as external, the object had to be destroyed
in fantasy but actually survive.
However, in the wake of Winnicott’s (1971) theorizations that
it is sufficient that the object does not retaliate for this process to
take place, Roussillon suggests further conceptualizations of the
process. For instance, Roussillon (1991) argues that there are four
grounding aspects that have to be present to allow the subject
to integrate his or her own destructiveness and to recognize the
reality of the object as external. First, the object has to be “hit” by
ON “FREE ASSOCIATIVE ACTIVITIES” 255

the subject’s destructiveness. It has to be touched and emotionally

penetrated, and the subject has to feel inside himself or herself
the strength of this movement that belongs to the inner baby who
often hinders the subject’s capacity to retain its function. Second,
the object must not withdraw from the relationship and must not
retaliate. At the same time, the object has to find and value the
creative and adaptive potentiality of destructiveness (Roussillon,
1999), carefully following the emotional movements in order to
get in touch with the subject’s creativity. To do this, the object
has to let destructiveness take place and gradually become more
transformable. At the beginning of this process, the discrepancy
will not be enough to produce a real representation of the differ-
ence, but will be enough to be introjected into the child’s psyche
as “similar,” that is, “not the same.”
Only if this process takes place can the object be considered
as a “survived object.” For the development of the potential
space, both creative and destructive processes have to take place
in which, respectively, the object has to be “created/found” and
“destructed/found” to start to exist. As Winnicott and Bion sug-
gested, the object’s primary femininity—that is, the capacity of
the object to be used, to digest, to transform into different reg-
isters, and to pleasantly survive a very primitive transference
(Freud, 1900)— allows the construction of transitional spaces and
phenomena. At the same time, however, each object has its own
“hardness,” which is not pliable and rests upon its being “anoth-
er-subject” with its own existence, solidity, and resistance. The
quantitative and qualitative balance of pliable and hard parts is
extremely important and has to change in the different develop-
mental stages. If their balance and intertwining is good enough,
a psychic bisexuality can develop. It is the hardness of the object,
its “primary masculinity,” unknowable and obscure, that fosters
symbolization. Therefore, it is the impact of the meeting/clash
with the mother’s masculinity—her inner otherness—that allows
the child to relinquish his or her primary undifferentiation. In
particular, the process of symbolization begins with the survival
of the link, which is revealed thanks to and through destructive-
ness (Roussillon, 1997).
In the first years of Miss B’s treatment, the therapist had to
endure complex and painful experiences where every attempt to
put what was going on in the session into words was systematically
256 SOLANO AND QUAGELLI

rejected. The therapist’s capacity to become a pliable medium

able to receive, experience, and contain for a long time without in-
terpreting (rejecting) Miss B’s destructiveness allowed Miss B ac-
cess to a first identification with this “primary femininity,” which
enabled her to start tolerating passivity, a first step toward the
development of thought. This, however, also requires the pres-
ence of a masculine/active function of the therapist, which is
able to transform by revealing the therapist’s hardness, that is,
her otherness. The therapist had to function “similarly enough”
as to become Miss B’s narcissistic double, but at the same time
she had to be “different enough” to keep her otherness. Miss B’s
case material concerning the contact lenses shows the delicate
balance the therapist has to keep between being “similar” and
“not-similar” and reminds us of Stern’s (1985) transmodal affec-
tive attunement of the mother in the relationship with her baby.
Miss B’s therapist had to tactfully receive and contain what Miss B
could communicate about her need for a “soft and foggy” world,
where all the limits are blurred, something the therapist could do
because in the previous months she had experienced it within her
psyche-soma through enduring an often painful undifferentiated
contiguity.
On the other hand, however, the therapist introduced a subtle
difference by mentioning “confusion.” In the following months,
the working through of this episode allowed Miss B to reach the
statement “Can’t you simply stay where I put you?” that sanc-
tioned her painful acknowledgment of an otherness and paved
the way for the recognition of a “third.” Miss B’s “use” of the
object/therapist as a pliable medium, her need for a sort of psy-
chosomatic attunement to construct a shared rhythm (Tustin’s
[1992] rhythm of safety), witnesses a failure in her meeting with
her primary object at this specific level of the construction of
the psychic apparatus. In Miss B’s historical reality, the meeting
with an intrusive, anxious, and unpredictable mother seriously im-
paired her possibility to develop some shared times, such as sleep-
ing, waking up, and being fed. This had to be carefully considered
in the treatment through proper timing of the interventions and
interpretations, which had to be grounded on a thorough analysis
of the countertransference in order to foster the development of
a first sense of psychic time in areas where it was frozen.
ON “FREE ASSOCIATIVE ACTIVITIES” 257

Some contributions from the Kleinian model underline the

importance of time in the treatment of patients like Miss B, who
apparently had to withdraw into a timeless dimension in order to
avoid any contact with their own emotions and with the outside
world that is perceived as threatening and destructive. Miss B su-
premely denied any sense of time and otherness, and “a massive
use of projective identification” (Bion, 1956, p. 345) took place.
Miss B repeatedly attacked any form of linking and her own as
well as the therapist’s thinking apparatus was often attacked
and put at stake. Any meaningful experience achieved through
the therapeutic work was denuded of any emotional meaning,
and Miss B “invested all her energy in keeping the treatment in
a static condition” (Riesenberg-Malcom, 1990, p. 391) in a way
that resembled Penelope’s unpicking of the tapestry in Ulysses.
Furthermore, in the countertransference it became apparent how
Miss B realized a sort of “dynamic paralysis” through an emo-
tional impasse in which the mind repetitively swung between op-
posing feelings, without being able to work through them. Miss
B’s difficulty in working through these feelings—her being stuck
in a timeless, paralyzing dimension, unable to decide and to ac-
cept the responsibility of looking more clearly at the world—was
also related to her gradually being able to accept a sense of time
linked with the possibility of tolerating the challenge of living and
growing up.
Therefore, the therapist had to promote the development of
temporality through retrieving within the session the “non-chron-
ological time of reverie” (Birksted-Breen, 2012, p. 827) that al-
lowed Miss B to introject a “reverberation time” (Birksted- Breen,
2003, p. 1505), which is a primitive sense of time resulting from
the experience of the time it takes for disturbing beta elements to
be assimilated, digested, and transformed in the mother’s psyche
before they can be given back to the infant. The therapist, as a
“good enough object,” had to be able to wait, to tolerate often
painful and complex emotions for quite a long time before trans-
formation could start, when Miss B could remain more in touch
with her emotions and start a process of thinking.
The introduction of a sense of temporality, that is, “the un-
freezing of psychic time” (Birksted-Breen, 2009, p. 37), opens the
258 SOLANO AND QUAGELLI

possibility for mourning the absence of the object, and in the

short clinical presentation herein it is possible to observe how
Miss B could gradually “look at” reality and begin to encounter
the vicissitudes of the oedipal situation. Miss B’s early experienc-
es did not allow her to negotiate the Oedipus complex, and her
internalized image is that of a split parental couple torn apart
by her birth, whose link was attacked and destroyed by her, who
powerfully took her father’s place in her mother’s bed. In the
transference, this was represented by Miss B’s violent attacks—also
through powerful work of the negative—on any attempt of the
therapist to put things together, to create generative links that
could enable a process of development session after session. Miss
B could not recognize any form of creative link, any “penis-as-
link function” (Birksted-Breen, 1996, p. 649), and was identified
with an omnipotent phallus in which she was the object of her
mother’s desire without interruption and without the presence of
a third, forever. Through the dream and associations to it, Miss B
attempts to represent a primitive oedipal configuration in which
a third appears (the many classmates in the dream, her memory
of the trip to the amusement park where her mother leaves on the
bus with her father). However, the acknowledgment of a third at
this level of psychic functioning evokes mainly narcissistic anxiet-
ies related to the intolerable risk of losing an exclusive and com-
plete link with the object, in which the boundaries are not always
clear-cut.
In the transference, Miss B repeated this primitive narcissistic
configuration in which the therapist had to be identified with her,
and the therapist’s existence as a separate object was powerfully
denied. Therefore, interpretations and interventions had to be
carefully evaluated in order not to be perceived as an intolerable
third. Among the different products of reverie, the sudden vi-
sual images that sprang to the therapist’s mind during the ses-
sion without being “worked out” were particularly valuable in the
treatment of Miss B. These visual images (ideograms) allowed not
only an understanding of the current clinical situation, but were
also a more tolerable “third” for Miss B in the sense of Winn-
icott’s transitional space being a “not me” and “not you” space
(Birksted-Breen, 2012). Hence, there is a first “meeting ground”
between the therapist’s symbolic thinking and the patient’s con-
crete thought, although it already entails a first development to-
ON “FREE ASSOCIATIVE ACTIVITIES” 259

ward symbolization. According to Freud’s model that would be

the first step toward representation, that is, from the indication of
perception to thing-presentation.
The vis-à-vis setting,1 which enables the patient to see and sense
the therapist’s face and body, allowed Miss B to find a better mir-
roring of her proto-emotions, gestures, and “thoughts without
thinker,” which she could not successfully put into words on her
own (Roussillon, 2005).

CONCLUSION

Klein, reflecting on the function of free association—gaining ac-

cess to an understanding of the patient’s inner world (Bronstein,
2002)—suggests that other techniques relying upon different
modes of communication can serve the same purpose. In particu-
lar, she refers to child analysis, where the technique has to consid-
er the “differences between the mental life of young children and
that of adults” (Klein, 1926, p. 128). The analytical play-technique
allows children to express phantasies and wishes in a symbolic
way, which according to Klein (1926) should be considered, and
consequently approached, akin to the language of dreams. There-
fore, she recognized a function similar to free association in “en-
acted” activity, such as play in children (Klein, 1926).
Winnicott (1971) was the first to suggest that even adult “psy-
chotherapy takes place in the overlap of two areas of playing, that
of the patient and that of the therapist” (p. 51). He realized that
certain patients “are not able to play” (p. 51) since they cannot
steadily access the intermediate area of transitional phenomena.
In the wake of these contributions, Green and Roussillon, to-
gether with other French analysts, developed a metapsychology
of these processes in order to describe the construction of a tran-
sitional area, where the primal meeting with the object had failed.
Nonetheless, it is important to remember that the different
formulations that have been discussed belong to different psycho-
analytic models and that Klein’s and Winnicott’s theorizations
differ to a considerable extent. For instance, the role of the ex-
ternal object and consequently of aggressiveness appear to be the
principal ones as far as this paper is concerned.
260 SOLANO AND QUAGELLI

The conceptualization of destructiveness and the use of the

object suggested by Green and by Roussillon refers to a state prior
to the ego identification with the object, that is, before the de-
velopment of the framing structure (structure encadrante) (Green,
2000a, p. 103) and before the boundaries inside/outside and self/
other are formed. This state, in Kleinian terms, would precede the
paranoid-schizoid position and resembles the autistic contiguous
position (Ogden, 1988) with respect to the particular relationship
with the object and the lack of “sense of inside and outside or self
and other” (Ogden, 1988, p. 34). In the autistic contiguous posi-
tion the mode of experiencing is a presymbolic, sensory mode,
where “otherness is almost of no significance” (Ogden, 1988, p.
36) and the relationship is not even between objects, as in the
paranoid-schizoid position, but rather a relationship of feelings
and bodily experiences. Therefore, there is no access to transi-
tional phenomena.
However, Bion’s developments concerning the functions of
projective identification link the different conceptualizations that
seem to converge in the concept of reverie. Despite the suspicions
of French authors toward “reverie” (and also because of problems
pertaining to the translation of the term), we believe that both
reverie and countertransference are fundamental tools for ana-
lysts who have to work hard in order to contain and give a first
representation of the intense anxieties deriving from presymbolic
traumatic experiences. It can be argued that reverie values ideo-
grams more, whereas countertransference values affects more.
Nonetheless, in order for images to be evocative, they have to be
affect-loaded, and often proto-emotions acquire a first representa-
tion through ideograms. Thus, the difference between these two
analytical tools appears to be not so clear in clinical practice.
We suggest that sudden ideograms that spring to the analyst’s
mind, other products of reverie, massive projective identification,
intense affect foreclosure, and even enactments could have a func-
tion akin to free association. They allow a mind, which cannot
communicate otherwise, to communicate and create a first repre-
sentation of primitive experiences. The communication of non-
symbolized, raw experiences, often related to very early psychic
trauma, can also take the form of enactments. The patient com-
municates unconscious wishful phantasies and defensive activity,
putting pressure on the analyst to actualize them or to play the
ON “FREE ASSOCIATIVE ACTIVITIES” 261

part of a phantasy object and join the patient in collusive activ-

ity. Once the analyst’s capacity to think, which has been numbed
during the enactment, is restored, the analyst can speak about the
patient’s experience from the very depths of his or her own expe-
rience of the disturbance (Polmear, 2013). Hence, the analyst is
then able to verbalize such experiences, give them a first symbol-
ization, and uncover aspects of the patient’s inner world.
While in adult neurotic mental functioning the mind can pro-
vide meaningful free association for itself, more primitive mental
functioning requires what can be called a “co-created free asso-
ciating activity,” which relies to different extents on the analyst’s
capacity for reverie. The result of this combined activity, akin to
play in child analysis, is at the same time a technical tool and a
part of the analytic process. Thus, one cannot be separated from
the other. Therefore, we maintain that all these mental events—
which are “free” in the sense that they are ruled by an unconscious
determinism and not subjected to any conscious criticism, and
which lead to the unfolding of the patient’s inner world—could be
considered under a broad umbrella of “free associative activities.”

note

1. Previous contributions concerning the need to differentiate psychoanalysis from

psychoanalytical psychotherapy suggested that the work with what we shall call
“free associative activities” would belong more to the latter than to the former
(Kernberg, Yeomans, Clarkin, & Levy, 2008). However, we believe that the focus
should not be on the treatment strategy, which per se does not “create” the phe-
nomenon or the need to work with it, but rather on the analyst’s/therapist’s inner
attitude, which has to be receptive enough to allow primitive mental functioning to
emerge, be received, and, ideally, contained and signified in the treatment. We sug-
gest that in order to do this the analyst/therapist should be able to understand the
patient’s primitive communications that cannot be expressed through verbal regis-
ters without restricting this kind of “listening” to psychotherapy only. Klein (1927),
in one of her grounding papers on child analysis maintained that “it is the attitude,
the inner conviction which finds the necessary technique. If one approaches child-
analysis with an open mind one will discover ways and means of probing to the
deepest depths . . . and will perceive that there is no need to impose any restriction
on the analysis, either as to the depth to which it may penetrate or the method by
which it may work” (p. 155). More recently, Roussillon (2005) argued that the “fun-
damental situation” (p. 366), where there the patient lies on the couch and com-
municates through free association, is “just one kind of psychoanalysis” (p. 366) and
that the analyst’s inner disposition and listening, independent of “other aspects of
techniques” (p. 366), are identitarian. It is the therapist’s/analyst’s internal disposi-
tion and attitude that allows the psychoanalytic device to develop the treatment, to
262 SOLANO AND QUAGELLI

foster the transference, and later—when possible—to enable the construction of a

first mental space where the patient can gradually start to bring himself or herself.

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Paola Solano The Psychoanaltyic Review

Via Mendozza 14 Vol. 102, No. 2, April 2015
16166 Genova
Italy
E-mail: paola.solano@alice.it

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