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the impact of the analytic setting itself on the process, as Donnet’s conception of the analytic situation recognizes the interaction of the analysand with the analytic site that includes the analyst, the analytic process, and what it offers. This interaction includes the activity of the intersubjective third (Katz 2013). In this context, André Green’s work on the function of the frame as a “third” and as a support to the mental functioning of the patient in its capacity to form a shared “analytic object” (1975) is relevant. So is Jean Laplanche’s introduction of the notion of the “hollowed-out” transference (1997, p. 662), mobilized by the relative non-reactivity of the analyst, which activates the possibility of solving anew the enigmas of childhood. Initially formulated by Green in 1975, ‘the analytic third’ is an elaboration of the Winnicottian transitional object and Green’s own concept of ‘the negative’. In its application to the psychoanalytic situation, Green (1997) posits “the exchanges between patient and analyst or, in other terms, between transference and countertransference processes, as creating an ‘analytic third’, a specific outcome of analysis” (ibid, p. 1072). Here, the analytic frame as a ‘third’ lends support to the mental functioning of the patient in its capacity to form a shared ‘analytic object’ (Green 1972, 1975). Combining the intrapsychic and intersubjective within the French psychoanalytic framework, Green (1973/1999; 2002), in line with Winnicott’s works on potential space, defines another formation in the area of tertiary processes. His version is the ‘analytic object’ (object of analysis and in analysis) as the ‘third object’ . Belonging neither to the analyst nor to the analysand, it has characteristics of transitionality, being formed in the analytic encounter . In Green’s thinking, the intersubjective relationship connects two intrapsychic subjects, and, “It is in the intertwining of the internal worlds of the two partners of the analytic couple that intersubjectivity takes on substance” (2000, p. 2). Another important influence is French Canadian Dominique Scarfone’s (2011, 2014) work on memory, temporality and symbolization within the multiple transference fields in the psychoanalytic situation. Conceptualizing symbolization as closely connected with remembering, Scarfone holds that remembering is not a simple act of ‘recalling’ or ‘evoking’. It implies the transmutation of some material into a new form in order to be brought into the psychic field where the functions of remembering and integration can occur (Scarfone, 2011 ) . The transmutation mentioned by Scarfone thus involves different levels of symbolization, i.e., levels of enactment, and those of unconscious symbolism of dreams, and conscious communicative symbolism of language. Scarfone (2010) has extended reflection upon the quality of the analyst’s listening in his notion of ‘ passibility ’, referencing Jean Laplanche’ (1993) concept of ‘ hollowed - out transference ,” a form of transference by which the analysand unknowingly deposits his actualized relationship to the enigma of his infancy. The form of this transference is itself deposited in another ‘hollow’ of the analyst’s ‘inviting (seductive) neutrality’ aimed at opening new mental spaces for the analysand.
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