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Rycroft reviews some of the differences between words as symbols and symbols as used and defined in psychoanalysis. Words as symbols are conventions learned from another person within an object relationship. Learning them implies that there has been some recognition of the object as separate from the self. The therapeutic situation in psychoanalysis has both verbal and nonverbal aspects. Words have power in psychoanalytic therapy to alter the patient's perception and awareness of himself. Moreover each interpretation carries with it a number of implications, for example, that the analyst is interested in his patient and that the patient believes that (in spite of his own 'forbidden' thoughts) his capacity for growth and realization is of primary importance to the analyst. How the analyst's words are perceived by the patient is, of course, highly individual, —they may be perceived as a boon or as an attack. The patient may express various drive derivatives by speech and endow the analyst's speech with identical or complementary meanings. Interpretations also evoke associated images. Apparent verbal understanding on the part of the patient may actually mask a failure of communication between patient and analyst.