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The concept of the setting is part of a metapsychological reflection on the psychoanalytic method. While it appears to designate the need to diminish the impact of perception in order to facilitate regression and the return of the repressed, the concept of the setting responds above all to the psychic need to respond to the extinction drive via the perception of tangible realities. By immobilizing this drive, the setting participates in an initial time of afterwardsness and in the possibility that a second, generating time might emerge. If it does, the setting then fades away and is replaced by thought.