In order to account for that situation, it is not enough to use certain aphorisms that have already become stereotyped in our milieu such as, for example, that nobody is an analyst, that one can only be seeking to become one. Access to the symbolic is the only possibility to escape from stereotyped repetition and from dissimulation, which are the favourite children of idealization, narcissism and melancholia. In short, his or her first function is to promote identificatory crises. If the first analysis was a training analysis, it is natural that the shadow of that first object should fall upon any other analysis. There is consensus on the need for the analyst's analysis to be as long as possible, since the analyst will be using the dialogue with his or her unconscious as a tool.
Polemics ignite when the meaning of the length of an analysis is questioned.
For some, length means many years, a long duration. For others, a definite time, with a few particular variations, but always within a setting with a minimum weekly frequency, let's say four or five times a week. For others, myself among them, length is more related to the capacity for wandering about and crossing through the territories indicated by the first tamer. The significant point is the necessary a-tension, fluctuating but constant, to detect the frequent and inevitable slips between the scene and the frame. Because if these do not occur, it is a sign that the transference is crystallizing and that what should be a frame is occupying the place of the scene.