You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Each one of us involved in psychoanalytic treatment has asked, and must continue to ask the question: What leads to basic change in psychoanalytic therapy? I recall Dr. Horney lecturing in psychoanalytic technique, and saying: “When we know what does what, how, then I could write the book on technique that I have been trying to write for years.”
My hope is that each of our speakers will illuminate some aspects of what does what, how, and that they will comment on what they define as “basic” and how they evaluate “change.” I hope they also will say something about their theories of human behavior and motivation upon which their theories of treatment are then based, for it is the philosophical and theoretical frame of reference that serves as the personal guide to action and influences procedures in treatment.
There are many questions to be considered. What is the significance of the doctor-patient relationship? Must it be analyzed and worked through in the therapeutic transference neurosis as Freud postulated? Or, going to the other end of the spectrum, should, as Carl Rodgers suggests, the relationship between doctor and patient be ignored? What kind of therapeutic climate should the therapist provide? Should he be a blank screen, a warm and accepting person whose chief function is the supporting of constructive strivings, or a “participant-observer”? Should the therapist come from the same socioeconomic background, have the same values, speak the same language?
How effective and necessary is the development of insight by the recall, understanding and emotional reliving of childhood memories? What emphasis and weight should be given to the interpretation of dreams? How do we help a patient work through a problem to achieve emotional insight?
What about the decreasing of the alienating process which reveals itself in, to quote Horney, “the remoteness of a neurotic from his own feelings, wishes, beliefs and energies?” How important is it to help the patient experience, to