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The psychoanalytic method is primarily introspective and empathic. The general tendency to lose sight of this introspective basis of psychoanalytic fact-finding and to mix its concepts with those of a biological or sociological frame of
reference may reflect anxiety occasioned by the combination of passivity in the face of rising instinctual tensions released by the introspective process. Extrapolations from the process may go beyond its realistic limitations, as when anthropomorphic and adultomorphic formulations are applied to early stages of ego development for which we should not pretend to have precise knowledge. It is necessary to see clearly and to accept the reductive limits of the analytic-introspective process so as to avoid unwitting shifts to other observational points of view. For example: 1. To describe the inner experiences of the neonate in terms of mother-child interaction is to describe a social situation from the standpoint of social psychology. 2. Transference is the influence of the unconscious upon the preconscious across an existing repression barrier. It consists of an amalgamation of repressed infantile object strivings with certain aspects of the analyst. It does not include those object strivings which come from the depth but do not cross a repression barrier, nor does it include those object strivings of the ego which were once transferences but have severed their ties with the repressed and have become autonomous object choices of the ego. All transferences are repetitions, but not all repetitions are transferences. 3. Confusion regarding the concept of dependency derives from its usage in the biological sense. It is equated with the feelings of infant for mother as though it were a primal psychological gestalt that cannot be further reduced by analysis. This is opposed to our empathic understanding that healthy children are quite capable of other than the fearful clinging of the dependent adult, the latter more accurately