A systematic review of the current “analyzability” literature (Bachrach and Leaff, 1978) shows striking agreement among psychoanalysts on the qualities that make someone a suitable candidate for psychoanalysis. This consensus, however, is expressed mainly on a metapsychological, abstract level that tends to elude definition and specification of clinically observable referents of the constructs and formal presentation of evidence in support of the inferences. What emerges is a consensus about a theory that persons with high ego strength and a lifelong history of good object relations are most likely to form workable transference neuroses and benefit most from psychoanalysis.

There are actually two poles to this conception of the role that patient factors play in the evolution of the psychoanalytic