Criteria for Interpretation in Patients with Obsessive Traits

My paper is divided into four parts. In the first I deal with communication as a means of investigation in the psycho-analytic situation. In the second I give a clinical example. The third part shows the change in the mechanism of defence and in the way of communication, and the opportunity for interpreting. The last part focusses on the importance of form and timing of interpretations.

In all of our patients we can observe, in various degrees, unconscious parts of the personality which are disposed to collaborate with us for the purpose of getting insight. This purpose contains in itself the therapeutic goal of psycho-analytic treatment. The setting as well as the interpretative technique to be followed in analysis must offer to our analysands the most favourable conditions, if the willingness to collaborate is to become manifest. Its development during the process of communication established with the patient may then bring about an effective participation.

This paper is a further contribution to a train of investigation I have been following for several years now.2 It is useful, therefore, to describe briefly the method used in these investigations. The method consists in a periodic evaluation of the sessions of patients having the widest possible range of psychopathological manifestations. The most interesting observations arise from those patients who have been undergoing psychoanalytic treatment for some years.

On taking the analytic session as an object of studies, I found I could delve into the contents of the unconscious fantasies that were working at a certain time and thus get a better knowledge of the stage the patients were going through in their therapeutic process, of the handling of their anxieties during the different phases of the session, and during the different days of the week or the month. Such observations allowed me in turn to make adjustments in interpretativ