On the Formulation and Timing of Interventions

Given the complexities of the formulation and timing of interventions, there have been surprisingly few efforts to approach this critical topic with any degree of systematization. Such endeavors, while providing broad and constructive principles of technique, need not detract from the human qualities of the analytic or therapeutic experience, and from the useful aspects of the analyst's nonpathological personal style of working.* It is therefore the main purpose of this paper to offer a set of tenets which can serve as a guide to the timing of interventions and to certain aspects of their formulation. Because of the scope of these two topics, it will not be possible to consider many other dimensions of this farreaching subject (see, however, Langs, 1978b).

The literature in this area is quite sparse. Through the years certain aphorisms have been developed and handed down: the analyst interprets resistances before contents, the surface before depths, ego before id, and at the moment when “the unconscious becomes preconscious.” However useful and sound, such principles hardly form a basis for definitive therapeutic work. Despite this, a search of the literature reveals few extensive considerations of these issues. The major clinical contributions appear to be Greenson's (1967) discussion of the techniques of analyzing resistances