You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Most psychiatrists, after having specialized in psychoanalysis, use it exclusively as a standard technique, choosing their patients accordingly. The answer to the question, 'In which cases is psychoanalysis indicated?' depends upon whether one defines psychoanalysis by such external criteria as the frequency of the interviews, the utilization of the couch and the method of free association, or whether one defines it by more essential criteria as a therapy which utilizes the phenomena of transference and resistance to increase the patient's ability to find ego-syntonic gratification. Every form of psychotherapy must be based on a sound knowledge of psychodynamic principles. Uncovering therapy aims at inviting unconscious material into consciousness and then helping the patient through interpretative work to bring these newly won psychodynamic quantities into harmony with the rest of the personality. The criteria for the initial choice of technique are derived from observations revealing the degree of the ego's functional efficiency.
In certain contrast to Alexander's demand for 'sound knowledge of psychodynamic principles' stands his remark: 'Under the weight of evidence offered by the facts of experimental neurosis of animals, and even more by the experiences of war psychiatry, we will have to discard the traditional view that the