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The clinical illustration of Chapter 2 made a distinction between the patient's experience O and the analyst's experience O. When the stimulating experience is the analytic session itself, O is the same for patient and analyst and the distinction has to be made between the processes by which the patient transforms his experience to achieve his representation of it and the processes by which the analyst does so; similarly between the patient's representation and the analyst's between T (patient) α and T (analyst) α, between T (patient) β and T (analyst) β. I shall abbreviate these signs further to Tp α and Ta α, Tp β and Ta β.
The experiences illustrated in Chapter 2 differ, but the illustrations may not display these differences adequately. The inadequacy lies in notation for the presentation of psychoanalytic phenomena with the precision required.
B has an emotional background which I believe to be typical, though this will need confirmation. From the first, it was evident that the resources of psychoanalysis might prove inadequate to the demands of such a patient. In terms of time and money alone treatment would be costly. Patience and a capacity for taking risks were also soon seen to be necessary. It was only necessary for the patient to feel that one demand was satisfied for him to make it the prelude for further exactions; this attitude pervaded all aspects of relationship with me and apparently with life at large. Typical of the development of awareness of a situation to a point at which I could venture on a verbal impression of it, was the fact that awareness grew gradually so that it was difficult to say, when an aspect had been clarified, what material, in the immediate circumstances, was sufficient to sustain the burden of interpretation I wished to lay on it. An interpretation
therefore appeared to lack the scientific quality that is conferred by supporting evidence. I have drawn attention to the high degree of speculation in my second description of B.