Beginning a psychoanalytic treatment: establishing an analytic frame

The opening phase of analysis has received scant attention. Freud initially included, as essential, the establishment of an analytic process via the method of free association in the opening phase. However, his stance in relation to this process we can now characterize as authoritarian, and as influenced by suggestion and manipulation. Recent literature, while contributing to the understanding of the range of dynamics possible when beginning an analysis, continues to ignore the manner in which the method of free association may be used by both participants in establishing an analytic frame. Two clinical examples of how this latter process may be inaugurated are given, and reasons for the drift away from it are suggested.