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There are three reasons why I think this book is worth reading. Firstly, because it draws attention onto subtle distinctions in what the analyst says. It is frequently assumed that the term ‘interpretation’ can be applied to most, if not all, of his utterances, or, at least to all those utterances which he would not mind publishing. Perhaps analysts would not quibble if their statements were sometimes called ‘interventions’ or ‘clarifications’. However, when it comes to ‘confrontations’ a somewhat sensitive area is reached.
This is not hard to understand if one considers the title of one of the best chapters of the book, ‘Confrontation from routine to heroic’, by Corwin. In the routine way, confronting the ego with the repressed does not mean much more than ‘helping to see’ or ‘pointing out’. But if the patient is unaware of the resistance, it may become essential to confront him with it. Such events may well become the memorable part of the analyst's day. This is another way of saying that a kind of unilaterality emanates from the analyst who does the confronting, which should make him question whether his delivery is not determined by countertransference irritation and frustration. Certainly the more heroic forms (I think ‘desperate’ would not be too strong a word) of confrontation tend to occur when an impasse in the analysis is reached. A passage from Greenson is worth quoting here: ‘I stopped him and asked what in the world he was doing. He replied that he guessed I seemed somewhat annoyed. I assured him that it was no guess.’ We are told that the patient's analysis subsequently began to move. However, I suspect that occasionally an analysis can also come to a full stop as the result of a confrontation. This, too,