The patient's psychopathology stems from pathogenic beliefs acquired in childhood from traumatic experiences with parents. The patient's pathogenic beliefs warn the patient that if he or she attempts to gratify certain impulses or to seek certain developmental goals the patient will risk the disruption of his or her all-important parental ties. It is as a consequence of these beliefs that the patient develops fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, or remorse; institutes repressions; and develops symptoms, inhibitions, and faulty object relations. The patient suffers unconsciously from pathogenic beliefs and so is powerfully motivated unconsciously to work with the analyst to disconfirm them. The patient works by testing the beliefs in relation to the analyst in the hope of disconfirming them, and by assimilating insight into the beliefs (and their falseness) conveyed by the analyst's interpretations. Indeed the therapeutic process is in essence the process by which the patient works consciously and unconsciously with the analyst to disconfirm pathogenic beliefs.