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The author generalizes from her extensive experience in assessing patients for suitability for psychoanalysis. She emphasizes the "real" as opposed to the "mythical" role of the consultant, whose limitations are acknowledged. The interviewer is advised to be active in eliciting information, in helping the prospective patient to see and feel certain dynamic aspects of his problems, and in conveying his or her beliefs about how and why analytic therapy is being recommended. Three patient characteristics are seen as necessary: sufficient intelligence, moral character, and financial resources. Intelligence is subdivided into the "will to be analyzed" and "psychological mindedness." The will to be analyzed is a function of the autonomous ego, is linked to the capacity for therapeutic alliance, and is distinguished from the "will to recovery," which is more changeable and drive-motivated. Among other capacities boding favorably for success in psychoanalysis are: capacity to recognize and tolerate internal reality and to distinguish it from external reality; curiosity and concern about this internal reality; capacity to recognize the existence of an unconscious mental life; and some signs of success and achievement in one or more areas of life.