Winnicott in translation: notes on the holding by Joyce Slochower

Taking its cue from the relational re-reading of the holding company that Slochower refers to in her work, the article attempts to illustrate the holding company's potential for promoting transformations in the care of those patients who cannot be treated with traditional psychoanalytical tools. This seems to be made possible by the analyst's subjectivity in providing an emotional environment that creates the conditions for a metaphorisation of unexpressed experiences through a process of mutual regulation. Then various situations are examined in which the patient is not able to use the analyst as a subject, situations in which the analyst's ability to be in function of the patient's needs can be declined in different ways, as in the case of Mark, in which what is activated through a holding is a process of detoxification from shame.