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Arden House Conference, Harrison, New York, May 1954, sponsored by the New York Psychoanalytic Society.
Psycho-analysis, thanks to the new knowledge obtained from the character studies of Freud, Jones, and Abraham, and Anna Freud's The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, has gradually expanded its fields of interest. To-day in the United States almost any illness which has a significant emotional component in its aetiology has become a possible indication for psycho-analysis. There is an unfortunate tendency amongst the American public to ascribe a magical power to psycho-analysis and a trend amongst medical practitioners to find psychogenic factors when the physical aspects of the disease are more important. Psycho-analysis should not be undertaken for trivial ailments. Mild incipient neuroses need not be an indication for analysis if the personality deviation is minimal. Stone describes the basic elements of the analytical process and discusses the technical alterations which may be required when it comes to applying the method to severe illnesses.
Analysis must be differentiated from other psychotherapies, particularly from interpretative psychotherapies. Some such general concept as 'modified psycho-analysis' would be useful to distinguish a method which utilizes many of the operational concepts of psycho-analysis. How far can the classical analytic method be modified and still be regarded as psycho-analysis? In Stone's opinion any number and degree of parameters (Eissler, 1953) can be introduced as long as they are directed towards the aims of the analytical effort. The effect of these parameters on the transference can be minimized as long as they are genuinely therapeutic, i.e. that they are actions bound to the immediate reality.
The suitability of psychotic illness for 'psycho-analytic office practice' depends upon the patient's aw