The Analytic Frame: Neither Subject nor Object

Works in Progress Seminar:

“The Analytic Frame: Neither Subject nor Object”

Wednesday, May 2, 2018 

8:00 pm

Presenter: Marion Oliner, Ph.D.

In this presentation Dr. Oliner will examine the tacit actions involving the frame that take place in each analytic treatment. These actions are not enactments to be accepted as sources of analytic insight.  As Bleger (Bleger, 1967) has shown, tacit actions are the secure foundation for the process, and should be analyzed at the conclusion of the analysis.  It is important not to confuse the contemporary rejection of the rigidity formerly associated with the Freudian model with the silence surrounding the frame, as if it were a throwback to the old authoritarian model.  Dr. Oliner’s interest draws on Winnicott’s conceptualization of the use of the object.  Applied to the analytic process, the analyst’s analytic attitude in response to the destructive transference is experienced by the patient as the analyst’s survival. Case material will illustrate Dr. Oliner’s belief in the crucial importance of the survival of the frame for the patient.

2 CME/CE credits offered.

Marion M. Oliner, Ph.D. (Columbia University 1958, Psychoanalytic Training Program of the NY Freudian Society, 1970) is currently in the private practice of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. She also teaches, supervises and writes on psychoanalytic topics. Dr. Oliner is a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association and a member and on the faculty of the Contemporary Freudian Society where she obtained her training.She is also a member of NPAP and the Metropolitan Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. For many years, she participated in the study group devoted to the long-term impact of the Holocaust on survivors and their children. In the many years she has been active in the field, she has participated in the governance of the NY Freudian Society, as it was then called, and chaired the Ethics Committee. She devised a syllabus for a course on ethics that is widely used. She has published articles on a wide range of subjects and has written two books: Cultivating Freud’s Garden in France (Aronson, 1988) and, more recently, Psychic Reality in Context Perspectives on Psychoanalysis, Personal History and Trauma (Karnac, 2012). This presentation, based on the importance of survival or its failure, mirrors her experience as a German Jew in Germany.