Aggiustamenti di rotta. Invarianze e flessibilità nella costruzione dello spazio analitico.

The author reflects on the setting and the problematic question of the relationship between constant elements that define the frame of the clinical context and the variables that actively intervene in the analytic process. Every patient tends to «be in the setting» according to the determining factors of his mental structure and his own relational patterns, and it is necessary to modulate the construction and maintenance of the analytic space, taking into account the characteristics of both members of the couple, in the context of transformative transactions between the analyst’s setting and that of the patient, in a negotiation (explicit and implicit) that brings into play the intrapsychic frameworks and relational configurations of both. A clinical sequence illustrates how, in circumstances particularly critical to the relationship, detailed and thoughtful interventions to adjust elements of the setting, actions charged with symbolic and relational meaning, can impact the transformative developments of the analysis in a meaningful way.