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English attempts to analyze the source of the sense of well-being. He believes that in some patients this is achieved by some gratifying libidinal attachment, and that patients who cannot form this attachment never do feel well despite many years of psychoanalytic treatment.
He then goes on to discuss Freud's comment that we shall be able to shorten analytic treatment only when we can give a greater measure of help to the ego. At one time Ferenczi, and later on some of his so-called followers, attempted this by encouraging countertransference reactions in the analytic situation. Although Freud found Ferenczi's experiments along these lines to be in vain, English quotes DeForest who believes that this type of transference manipulation is worthwhile. For further support English refers to Ribble's studies on the needs of the infant for sensuous, oral relations with the mother. He claims that since the satisfaction of such needs creates a feeling of well-being in the infant, it would, if created in patients, increase the facility of the ego in its synthetic functions. A similar effect is produced by the chemical action of barbiturates on the hypothalamus and the thalamus.