"The Way Things Are"—In Psychoanalytic Training and Practice

IN THIS PAPER I WISH to communicate some of my personal experiences and views pertaining to the teaching and to the practice of psychoanalysis. In borrowing P. W. Bridgman's title " The Way Things Are " I have committed myself to an operational treatment of my subject: a primarily descriptive level of reporting that includes the steps followed in the course of study. The title " The Way Things Are " is intended to emphasize a complex area of communication, which centers around expressing my own personal experiences without lapsing into a state of autism or merely talking to myself.

In his preface to " The Way Things Are, " P. W. Bridgman stresses the individual component of science. He points out that any creative science is always more private than public. He also reasons that

even in pure Physics, where the problem does not obtrude itself prominently, it is becoming evident that the problem of the observer must eventually deal with the observer as thinking about what he observes.

Since this is a concern even in pure physics, how much more of a concern it must be in psychoanalysis.

The physical sciences have been successful in creating a general atmosphere which encourages a measure of objectivity or, more precisely, a disinterested point of view. Psychoanalysis has shown a strong resistance to the evolution of such a "disinterested point of view."

Try as I may, as a practicing analyst I cannot step out of my analytic skin in order to deal with myself as an analyst in a disinterested way. Nevertheless, I shall make an effort to report to the