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symbol, as metaphor, not literally.” (1952b, p 80-81). Rycroft (1958) and Heimann (1957) referred to “figure and ground” rather than the frame. Other authors use the terms “frame” and “setting” as synonymous. In this entry the two words are used as synonyms, except when otherwise indicated. Lacan’s experiments with the temporal aspects of the frame prompted serious reflection on the clinical and theoretical implications of the classical setting (1958-1997). Another innovation of Lacan’s was his postulation of the analyst as the subject-who-is-supposed-to- know. This notion was at once deeply respectful of a necessary inter-subjective asymmetry in the analytic relationship, and meant to be ironic regarding the normative pretensions of those analysts who saw themselves as incarnating healthy egos for their patients. In this viewpoint, the classical frame is inherently paradoxical. Not “authoritarian” per se , but rather allowing this imaginary projection on the part of the patient to be tolerated and gradually disabused in interpretive work (1947-1997,1945-1966). Aulagnier, in a series of as yet un-translated texts (1968, 1969, 1970, 1977) scrutinized the ineluctable imbrication of the subject in the projections of the other. She pointed out that the injunction “to say everything that comes to mind ”can have the effect of placing the patient in a state of absolute slavery, of transforming him into a talking robot ”. In this and other ways, she analysed the potential alienation perpetrated by an unthinking application of the framework. In her concept of the inevitable “violence of interpretation ”, she situated early caretaker and analyst in the same paradoxical position of risking “excessive ” interpretation, a cautionary note that has led French speaking analysts on both sides of the Atlantic to express reservations about an uncritical use of countertransference to understand patients. French writers have been particularly sensitive to the inherent “seductive” potential – both necessary and abusive – which is part of the analytic setting. Donnet (2001) differentiates the analytic site from the analysing situation: “the analytic site contains the ensemble of what the offer of an analysis constitutes. It includes the work of the analyst” and “the analysing situation results haphazardly from the sufficiently adequate encounter between the patient and the site” (p.138). The two principal sources for current theorizing specifically concerning the setting are Winnicott (1955) and Bleger (1967). Some authors also refer to the Barangers (1983) use of field theory, which views the analytic situation as a co-creation; the two members of the analytic pair are inextricably linked, neither can be understood without the other. The analytic field is configured as an unconscious fantasy of the analytic couple that will be addressed as such over the course of the entire analysis. André Green’s seminal paper “The Analyst, Symbolisation, and Absence in the Analytic Setting” (1975) was dedicated to the memory of Winnicott, an author whose work Green introduced into France. In Green’s reading of Winnicott, the frame and the quality of analytic presence accompanying it is the present day “environment” in its role of facilitation or impingement of the patient’s capacity for experiences in a transitional space and creative thinking. Thinking is meant here in the sense of non-hallucinatory, non-projective thoughts subjectified as part of oneself. In an extension of this theoretical opening, René Roussillon’s
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