You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The patient's situation in the first weeks of analysis is naturally a difficult one…from his point of view. He is excusably mistrustful and the analyst can hardly promise him any definite results with the exception of the possibility that after quite some time his neurosis will be cured. No definite promises can be made when we are dealing with an unpredictable number of impulse-factors and the quantitatively related strength of the defense mechanisms. The only positive factor we might name is that the patient's feeling of guilt is lessened temporarily because he has acquired another weapon of defense against his conscience, viz., that he is ill and therefore not responsible for his actions, and, furthermore, he is doing something to effect a cure.
We learn from experience that at the beginning of treatment, every analytic interpretation appears to the patient to be ridiculous or“crazy.” This is to be expected. The patient uses as his criteria the content of conscious thought, and hence interpretations taken from the sphere of affect and the defense mechanisms must appear nonsensical to him. The simplest way of coping with this constant utilization of“logic” against affect, is for the analyst to agree that the interpretations of unconscious material appear nonsensical from the point of view of conscious thought. But one must add,“Did you really expect the conscious and the unconscious to be identical?” I usually ask my patients the following in order to carry this resistance ad absurdum.“Imagine that it were possible for you to visit another planet, where beings similar to humans dwelt. Would you be astonished if the natives of that planet refused to take a good dollar bill in payment for their wares? Do you think that their indignant or astonished refusal to accept the bill would be stating something about the real value of the bill?” Whereupon the patient