The notion of the setting and the extinction drive

The author describes the analysis of a woman patient in the absence of the analytic setting during the long period of confinement due to Covid-19. Bleger's distinctions between the analytic process and the frame are explored in this context, and Green's formulation on the function of the framing structure in the construction and elaboration of phantasy life, as well the function of the hallucinatory wish fulfilment in the movement towards symbolization. The production of a sculpture during this time is on the pathway towards the elaboration of the work of mourning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) Abstract (French) L'auteur decrit l'analyse d'une patiente, par telephone, dans le contexte du confinement du a la Covid-19, alors que la dimension physique du cadre analytique est absente. Elle interroge la theorie de Bleger et sa distinction entre cadre et processus analytiques ainsi que celle de Green sur la fonction de la structure encadrante et la fonction de l'accomplissement hallucinatoire de souhait dans le mouvement vers la symbolisation. La production d'une sculpture pendant l'analyse amorce l'elaboration d'un travail de deuil. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

The empty couch: Love and mourning in times of confinement.

This paper describes the psychoanalytic treatment of a woman patient during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the setting was profoundly disrupted and was transferred from in-person psychoanalysis to telephone sessions. Drawing on Bleger's formulations on the construction of the analytic frame and on André Green's on the function of the framing structure in the construction and elaboration of phantasy life, the case study shows how, in the absence of the physicality of the setting, the most primitive anxieties about the symbiotic relationship with the mother were expressed and contained in the transference and countertransference in the analysis. The author offers some considerations about the notion of "background of the uncanny", derived from Yolanda Gampel, which draws attention to the challenges when both patient and analyst are inserted into the same traumatic wider context. It is suggested that the production of an art object by the patient during this period represents a step in the elaboration of the work of mourning and towards symbolization.