Patients consulting the clinical department of the Sigmund Freud Institute at Frankfurt are subjected to a short preliminary interview allowing a rough selection of those patients for whom a detailed diagnostic examination is proposed. According to this first appraisal, made with the help of the usual criteria for indication, this group should respond to psychoanalytic treatment. The detailed examination, however (by interviews, tests and group discussion), revealed that no more than 70 per cent of the selected patients were finally accepted for treatment, while the rest had to be referred for non-analytic forms of therapy outside the clinic. A sample of 65 patients was scrutinized for possible criteria determining their acceptance or referral. The first (accepted) group differed from the group of referred patients significantly