Spontaneity within Psychoanalytic Ritual: Making Use of a Frame Bend with a Shame-Plagued Patient

Relational psychoanalysis encourages us to challenge traditional approaches, instead emphasizing a dialectical relationship between ritual and spontaneity. However, to some, relational freedom conflates an open attitude with unruly technique. In addition to the abundance of ritual provided by a customary frame, a coconstructed relational frame includes the option of moving beyond a generic version toward one more adapted to a particular patient’s needs. A frame bend that arises spontaneously from a shame-based impasse can be viewed as existing within the figure-ground relationship, between ritual and spontaneity, which upholds the dialectical constructivism underlying a relational framework.