The Psychoanalytic Process: Theory, Clinical Observation and Empirical Research Joseph Weiss, Harold Sampson, and the Mount Zion Psychotherapy Research Group. N.Y.:  The Guilford Press, 1986.

This book is probably unique among psychoanalytic works: It is the only one I am aware of which both proposes a new theory of

psychoanalytic therapy and provides rigorous empirical tests for it. The theory is intriguing and the research represents the state of the art in the application of single-case-study methodology to the empirical investigation of the psychoanalytic process.

Weiss has developed a theory over the last 30 years which contrasts the traditional analytic theory of automatic mental functioning regulating drive discharge with what he calls the higher mental functioning hypothesis, arguing that unconscious beliefs and judgments play a large role in psychic functioning, psychopathology, and psychoanalytic treatment. Weiss has generalized the concept of pathogenic belief to encompass a wide variety of ideas. For example, a patient may believe that her mother cannot tolerate any signs of independent initiative on the patient's part, that independence would lead to the mother's death.

A major class of pathogenic beliefs involves unconscious guilt (and similar affects such as shame, fear, and anxiety). The book contains discussion of a number of types of unconscious guilt, which all seem to involve fear that the child's activity may, in some way, cause harm to the parents. From Freud's belief that the oedipal child will repress her or his libidinal interests in the opposite sex in the interest of maintaining the parents' goodwill, Weiss derives the conclusion that Freud believed that the ego wish to retain the parents as protectors is stronger than the libidinal attachments to them. This unconscious guilt, in Weiss' view, is frequently experienced over the accomplishment of “reasonable ego goals” that, it is feared, would lead to harm to the parents: “A child may come to condemn himself for what is generally thought of as a normal acceptable wish or developmental goal if he infers, whether or not correctly, that by attempting to satisfy this wish or reach t