By Christophe Herbert, Psychologist

The Frame as a Therapeutic Tool

Training by Christophe Herbert, Psychologist (training enhanced by A.I.)   

You know the frame as a reality of your daily practice. But do you truly think of it as a clinical tool in its own right?

This training invites you to shift your perspective on the therapeutic frame. No longer as an administrative or ethical constraint, but as a living, meaningful space, shaped by the relationship — and bearing therapeutic value far beyond the words exchanged in session.

Drawing on the major authors who founded and enriched the notion of the frame — Freud, Bleger, Winnicott, Kohut — you will build an understanding that is both theoretical and clinical, immediately applicable to your practice. 

Training description 

The therapeutic frame is one of the most fundamental notions in clinical practice, yet one of the least thoroughly taught during psychologists' initial training. We learn to set it up. We rarely learn how to think about it.

This training for psychologists fills that gap. It offers a rigorous and clinically operative reading of the therapeutic frame, from its origins in Freud's technical writings to the contemporary contributions of self psychology. It draws on landmark authors — Bleger and the silent frame, Winnicott and holding, Kohut and the experience of empathic reliability — to construct an understanding of the frame that goes beyond the mere application of rules.

The training then examines the concrete components of the frame — time, space, fees, confidentiality, the therapeutic contract — seeking to illuminate their deeper clinical meaning. Each component is analysed as an organiser of the therapeutic relationship, carrying conscious and unconscious messages addressed to the patient.

The third module moves to the heart of the clinical work with the frame: breaches, transgressions, acting-out, attacks on the frame, and tests of the limit. These events, often experienced as obstacles by the therapist, are repositioned here as clinical material of the highest value — provided one knows how to read them.

Finally, the fourth module marks a decisive shift: it invites the therapist to turn inward, towards their own relationship to the frame, and towards what their breaches of the frame reveal about their personal history and countertransference. Supervision and personal work are approached here not as general recommendations, but as concrete tools for consolidating the internal frame.

This training is intended for all clinical psychologists, whatever their practice setting. It is designed to immediately enrich practice, deepen clinical reflection, and lastingly nourish the therapeutic stance.

4 learning objectives

By the end of this training, you will be able to: 

 1. Situate the notion of the frame within the history of clinical and psychoanalytic thought. From Freud to Kohut, by way of Bleger and Winnicott, you will master the theoretical foundations that established the frame as a central clinical concept, rather than a mere technical rule.

 2. Identify and analyse the concrete components of the frame in your own practice. Time, space, fees, confidentiality, explicit and implicit contract: you will be able to read each component of the frame as a meaningful clinical organiser, addressing a conscious and unconscious message to your patient.

 3. Recognise and clinically utilise breaches of the frame. Lateness, absences, missed payments, out-of-session requests, acting-out, attacks on the frame: you will have the conceptual tools to transform these events into therapeutic material, and to distinguish considered adaptation of the frame from unreflective erosion.

 4. Assess and consolidate your own internal frame as a therapist. You will be able to identify the influence of your personal history and countertransference on the holding of the frame, and to understand the role of supervision and personal work in building a stable and reliable clinical presence.

Knowledge validation test and certificate

This training includes: Videos illustrated with a slideshow + Training certificate

Trainer: Christophe Herbert, Psychologist

Psychologist specialising in the psychotherapeutic support of victims and the severely bereaved. Director of H4 Éditions