The objective here is to discuss Pierre Fedida’s broad and complex thinking regarding psychoanalytic technique through an articulation of the notions of countertransference and setting in the psychoanalytic clinic. The model implicit in Fedida’s conception of countertransference is the fictitious mother-baby relationship, where the mother is a receiver able to be in resonance with the child’s psychic state. As a result, she can activate the baby’s language and consequently alleviate its suffering. Fedida sees in the countertransference a function that regulates the "intersubjective experience" between analyst and patient and has a function of para-excitation, governed at a pre-conscious level of naming. This is what sustains the analytic setting as a space of potency that engenders an analytic situation. We also call attention to the evocative style of Fedida’s writing, as it mobilizes thinking and insight proper to Freudian metapsychology. In short, his work has contributed significantly to a broader understanding of psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
psychoanalytic technique; countertransference; setting; analytic situation