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The difficulties of psycho-analytic technique are conveniently resolved into two groups, those incident to the patient and those incident to the analyst or, in other words, the difficulties inherent in the case-material and those inherent in the method of investigation. Of these, the analyst's own difficulties are the more important, because they influence not only his own attitudes and reactions but colour his view of the patient's condition and reactions. At the outset, therefore, we have to come to a definite decision about policy: are we to assume as the basis of our study a hypothetical 'perfectly analysed' individual making analytic contact with a neurosis of classical outline, or may we take it that the analyst is an ordinary individual who has, through his own analysis, been freed from the main sources of unconscious bias, and is now approaching the routine of ordinary analytic practice where mixed cases of every conceivable sort constitute the greater part of clinical material? The question might be put in another form; should we commence with a discussion of phenomena such as transference, resistance, etc., exhibited by the patient or with a discussion of the phenomena of counter-transference, counter-resistance, liable to be exhibited by the analyst?
In actual fact it will be necessary to combine both plans, and in