Indications for Psychoanalysis; The Place of the Dream in Clinical Psychoanalysis. (Monograph II of the Kris Study Group of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute): Reported by Herbert F. Waldhorn, M.D. Edited by Edward D. Joseph, M.D. New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1967. 106 pp.

The report, Indications for Psychoanalysis, contains the remains of a section of the Kris Study Group that expired in 1958. The personal report by Herbert F. Waldhorn derived from the same study is shorter but more alive.1

Three cases are presented illustrating problems concerned with the selection of patients for psychoanalysis. Discussion of the cases serves as a stimulus for a systematized approach. Using the structural point of view, a list of functions considered pertinent in assessing analyzability is presented. These functions are divided into four categories: from the side of the ego, from the side of the superego, from the side of the id, and from the environment. In theory this approach has advantages over the use of diagnostic criteria such as Glover advocated. Operationally, however, the difficulties in quantifying functions, assessing their relative importance, and assigning values to the way they interrelate lead to insoluble difficulties in application. The approach is worthwhile only so long as it is regarded as a way of acquiring data rather than the tool for making the decision itself.

Leo Stone criticizes the group's tendency to fragmentize the problem of patient evaluation, preferring an assessment based on the patient's total life functions. Among his criteria he includes 'the ordinary capacities exhibited in the course of meeting life situations', such as the capacities for object relations, work, and sexual gratification. Perhaps because of the brevity of the report the assessment of analyzability and the goals of analysis do not seem clearly differentiated. Problems in the areas of object relations,