ON FORMULATIONS TO PATIENTS

For the author, the psychoanalytic clinical fact can only be an arbitr ary fragment detached from the totality of the situation, which alone specifies it and which comprises the different forms of formulations t hat are proposed to patients. Using the difference established by Freu d between what is and what is not analysable as a starting point, he d istinguishes between two radically different analytic situations. To i llustrate, he extracts, from the same cure, a 'fact' constituted of tw o moments; one 'this side of analysability, rite other at its limits. He calls 'homogeneous' the neurotic moment in which transference and c ountertransference are similar in nature, and he calls 'heterogeneous' the 'limit' situation in which predictability is absent, and in which change, when it occurs, is one of divine surprise. The author advance s an hypothesis on the factors at work in the changes that subsequentl y occurred, particularly in the case of the 'limit' situation, drawing from the therapeutic experience of the 'psychoanalytic psychodrama' a nd from the work of Jean Laplanche. A single generating principle woul d thus be involved, based on the action of the unconscious seduction c ontained in the unknowable, 'enigmatic', part of ver bal and nonverbal messages, it grounds its transforming action in the following sequenc e: unconscious seduction, limited traumatic penetration, symbolisation , ie. the emergence of meaning in the aftermath.