Commentary on Frank's “Action, Insight, and Working Through” from the Perspective of Freudian Analysis

In thinking over Dr. Franks' thoughtful and stimulating paper, I found myself recalling an exchange that occurred during the discussion period at a recent professional panel in which I participated. A number of us, representing a diverse range of theoretical orientations on the psychoanalytic spectrum, had been asked to present our views of some extensive case material. We had all gone on in considerable length about the psychodynamics, the transference, and the countertransference in the more or less predictable ways we have all come to expect in these situations, when a member of the audience got up and asked, “But what do you want him [i.e., the patient] to do?” We were all a little nonplussed by this question, which was asked in an insistent tone of voice that indicated that the questioner believed he was raising a perfectly reasonable issue that we had unaccountably been ignoring.

What do we want him to do? I puzzled to myself. What possible context of meaning, frame of reference, or point of connection with anything we were talking about could he be referring to! All could make of it was that the questioner was somehow an outsider who probably did not get what we were about. Fortunately, the senior discussant on the panel, an erudite and very seasoned analyst, was quicker on the uptake than the rest of us. He alone recognized that this gentleman was asking a question about our theory of cure: what did we want the patient to do in