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President of the International Psycho-Analytic Association and Professor of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
YOU WILL RECALL Freud's famous definition of psychoanalysis: a form of therapy, a theory of human behavior, and a method of research; let us remember that clinical work forms the basis of the two latter portions of the definition. All psychoanalysts, regardless of their area of interest, undertake the psychoanalytic treatment of patients, and it is in the clinical situation that they either undertake their research or evolve their theory. Within the psychoanalytic situation consisting of a patient and a psychoanalyst are aspects that are encountered everywhere, regardless of who undertakes the psychoanalysis.
An important clinical issue, one that cannot be overestimated, is the nature of the therapeutic effect that psychoanalysis exerts. This issue has bedeviled the field from the beginning. Closely allied to it is the fact that the interests of the patient and the interests of the psychoanalyst may not necessarily coincide.
A patient comes to a psychoanalyst for help with his problems, as manifested by anxiety, symptoms, difficulties in living or in human relationships, or because somebody in his environment insists that he is disturbing. Most patients are not seeking understanding of themselves as a primary goal, and would be content to ignore their inner mental life-its sources, evolution, development and content — if only they