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level. The aim of the relationship is to provide the equivalent of a geographical map to allow the patient insights and new points of view on himself. The couple does not enter the inner world, and surface space is explored and this could be an informative and explanatory way to work in analysis. 2 The contact between the Ego of the Analyst/ the Self of the Patient: Here, the analyst is able to organize himself in a fairly stabilized condition of preconscious receptivity, while maintaining his own experiential center of gravity in the conscious ego, in situations in which the patient is instead available to a more profound and complete exchange. The analyst is also able to notice projective intrusions of the patient, which he recognizes as elements of non-self and to give back, formulating dynamic hypotheses, to the patient’s internal processes including extensive scenarios of his patient’s dreamlike life. 3 The contact between the Ego-Self of the Analyst /Ego of the Patient. Here, the analyst uses the resonance of his own self to identify, comparatively, the underdeveloped or inaccessible areas of the patient’s self; but he also experiences, with his own self, the ways, the levels and the strength with which the unconscious defensive Ego of the patient suspends, chokes or usually cancels the subjective contact of the patient with his own self (Bollas 1987). The wide and deep contact with the his own self allows the analyst to receive, experience and discern the parts of the patient’s mental life (object and functions) that have been split and projected into him. 4. The contact between the Ego-Self of the Analyst /the Ego-Self of the Patient. In this configuration, the contact with the patient is deeper: the preconscious channels widen and the exploratory functions of the observing ego of the analyst can illuminate, deepen, and gain contact with parts of the patient and of himself. Here, the analyst does not deduce, but sees more; the introjective processes prevail over the projective ones; the projective processes of the patient, experienced by the analyst, are not only objects of verbal communication, but they are more often treated through the identification and a creative play. Overall, Bolognini (1991) advocates for a widened definition of the concept of the self. According to such a broad definition, the self would correspond to the internal reality (including object representations) which turns out to be a lasting, characterological and constituent part of a person’s mental world, and which may be the object of his subjective experience. Seen in this way, the nuclear part of the self is the part in which the elements that have most profoundly and authentically been the object of projective identification form an organic nucleus with the person’s hereditary somato-psychic constitution; at this level any psychoanalytic work involving de-identification will inevitably be inappropriate and destructive. This nuclear self relates to a deep identity (the equivalent of Winnicott’s ‘true self’). The overall picture formed by the internal objects, the nuclear self and their relations can transmit a basic emotional atmosphere of the self, whose occasional fluctuations can be perceived in the patient’s state of mind, in the contents of his dreams and the atmosphere of the session. The analyst can choose to observe this dream theatre or take an active part in it. In the first case he works mainly by the ego; in the second case he brings his own self into play too. Various combinations and permutations of analytic work, encompassing contacts between analyst’s and patient’s ego s and selves, lead to processes involving ego’s growth and emancipations (from id and superego) on one hand, and expansion and enrichment of self on the other hand go hand in hand: “Experience teaches us that in a good analysis these two
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