Discussion of Arnold Rothstein's Paper the Preliminary Interviews: Finding a Language That “Touches”

I found it very interesting that Arnold Rothstein should suggest the trusting model as criteria of analyzability and distinguish it from the evaluative model. This brought me to question my own perception of my analytic work. Indeed, a psychoanalyst cannot question himself regarding the preliminary interviews, without questioning the way he sees psychoanalysis and the attitude he adopts toward his analysands.

During my training as a psychoanalyst, I was emphatically told that I should reserve psychoanalysis for neurotic patients who express themselves verbally with ease and who have a good capacity for symbolization. I soon realized that patients who would ask me for help rarely met these criteria. I then became aware of a few facts. To begin with, it was obvious to me that if I followed these criteria, my psychoanalyst's couch could remain empty. I then realized that some patients who fit this description during the preliminary interviews proved to be very different once the analytic sessions had started. Indeed, once the containing setting was in place, the split parts of themselves, which had not been apparent during the preliminary