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Although candidates readily grasp the theoretical concept of the ego's central role in the management of conflict that characterizes the neurotic process, I believe that the most difficult aspect of teaching candidates the clinical skills of psychoanalysis lies in helping them to pay closer attention to observing and analyzing the actual manifested process of the ego's responses to conflict during the immediate analytic material. I have found the following brief conceptual guideline significantly helpful when shared with my students and supervisees.
I shall briefly describe a basic analytic methodology for consistently providing analysands with a greater than traditional degree of participation in observing, grasping, and using their acquired insights into the nature and motivations of their ego's defenses as they are remobilized in the face of conflict over progressive consciousness of instinctual derivatives. Phase 1 describes the focus of the analyst's attention on points of change in the flow of material in order to identify the conflict and its involuntary resolution in the immediate context. Phase 2 explains how to demonstrate to the patient the defensive manifestations against specific drive derivatives, in a manner that allows the patient to attend to those processes in preparation for exploring the motivations for such defensiveness. Phase 3 describes analyzing the seminal role of the ego's defensive use of transferences of authority.