From Insight to Change

I SHALL TRY TO BRING INTO FOCUS a segment of the therapeutic process which I feel is usually obscured or overlooked. I refer to the stages between insight and the achievement of therapeutic results. I do not mean "beyond interpretation" in the sense that authors commonly mean therapeutic agents other than insight, such as the affective component or the therapeutic relationship. Gedo, using the same phrase as the title of his (1979) book, meant by it a drastically revised theory of psychoanalytic understanding and treatment centering mainly on values and goals. My focus on the steps beyond the achievement of insight is to expose links in the therapeutic chain in the standard classical procedure which in a sense encompasses all others.

Following the analysis of resistances, the exposure of id contents, and a demonstration of the dynamic conflicts between them, the observing ego of the patient, allied with and spurred by the analytic activities of the analyst, comes into possession of new insights. With the cognitive expansions thus acquired and the accompanying affects necessary to fix and render them useful, the ego achieves a more unobstructed view into the nature of the compromise formations it has effected and the unconscious reasons