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of maintaining the same “evenly-suspended attention […] in the face of all that one hears” […] “the rule of giving equal notice to everything is the necessary counterpart to the demand made on the patient that [he] should communicate everything that occurs to him”. Moreover: the analyst “should withhold all conscious influences from his capacity to attend, and give himself over completely to his “unconscious memory” […] He should simply listen, and not bother about whether he is keeping anything in mind” (Freud, 1912, pp. 111-112). These ideas are still valid, but there has been greater deepening of them, especially with Bion’s ideas of reverie . Bion defines reverie as “that state of mind which is open to the reception of any “objects” from the loved object and is therefore capable of reception of the infant’s [patient’s] projective identifications whether they are felt by the infant [the patient] to be good or bad” (Bion, 1962, p. 36). Other important components of the internal setting are neutrality and abstinence. Laplanche and Pontalis define neutrality , as an attitude in the analyst of trying to be “neutral in respect of religious, ethical and social values […] neutral too as regards manifestations of transference” and neutral because “he must not, a priori, lend a special ear to particular parts of a patient’s discourse, or read particular meanings into it, according to his theoretical preconceptions” (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1973 p. 271). Anna Freud defined neutrality in terms of the need for the analyst to remain equidistant from the ego, superego and id of the patient (1936). Laplanche and Pontalis define abstinence as follows: the analyst “should refuse on principle to satisfy the patient’s demands and to fulfil the roles which the patient tends to impose upon him.” (1973, p. 2). Freud discussed the dangers of therapeutic zeal in his papers on technique written between 1911 and 1915 and famously described the analyst as acting like the surgeon. The latter comparison has been open to misinterpretation and criticism if it is taken literally (as in the idea of the silent analyst). Rycroft (1985) underlined the fact that the analyst needs not only to give “correct” interpretations but also importantly he needs to provide a relationship with his patients within which an analytic process can develop. Aron (2001) underlines that the interaction in analysis is asymmetrical. One asymmetry is that while both participants will fail in the attempt to maintain the setting/frame, it is the analyst’s responsibility to restore the frame through analysis. This seems both an ethical and a metapsychological matter, pertaining to the duty and function of the analyst. Neutrality and abstinence are also the basis of the ethical dimension of the analyst’s attitude towards his/her patients and work. Without a genuine internalisation of these capacities the analyst’s narcissistic needs may lead to exploitation of the patient’s vulnerability. The study of ethical breaches (Gabbard and Celenza, 2003) has drawn attention to the importance and meaning of analytic abstinence and the continuing need for the analyst to monitor his/her countertransference. Although the internal setting usually refers to the analyst, however, there is no reason for it not to be considered regarding the patient as well . The specificity of the analytic situation lies in the willingness of the patient to allow the free expression of unconscious affects, conflicts and fantasies and the responsiveness of the analyst to grasp it. For the patient to be able to express his unconscious fantasies he will need a particular mental state, not easy to
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