Lewin compared the physician's first office with the dissecting room, and his patients with that 'first patient', the corpse. The medical student can hardly be emotionally detached from that corpse, the utter passivity of which provides an ideal outlet for many sublimated active libidinal drives. Identification with the cadaver is the archetype of introspection. Some of the difficulties encountered by student analysts are connected with the unconscious interpretation of the analytic office as a dissecting room, and the patient as a cadaver. The passivity of the analytic situation has been compared by Nunberg with death. 'Not seeing' the analyst is equivalent to the darkness of the grave. The success of the phase of initiation into analysis depends on the ability of the analyst to 'conceive of his patient as alive in the present', struggling with thoughts and feelings. Premature