Initiating Analysis

Psychoanalysis is defined in this paper as a process that initiates in the analyst's mind with the framing of the patient's material in terms of transference and resistance. Once the analyst is able to do this, a first level of transformation of experience is effectuated that then must be consummated through interpretation to the patient of what is occurring in their mind as it is lived out in the experience with the analyst. For this author, Bion's model of container-contained complements Freud's transference and resistance model; it also offers an example to his thesis that only within a clear model of mind and a corresponding theory of therapeutic action can the psychoanalyst define for themselves and for their patients a way of knowing that they are doing analysis. The patient's unconscious storm is present from the moment of the first interviews, and the analytic process begins whenever the analyst is ready to experience, think, and talk about it with his or her patient.