THE EXTENT OF AN INDIVIDUAL'S KNOWLEDGE OF HIS OWN PSYCHIC processes is one of the foremost problems which confront the psychoanalyst. Most members of the profession are concerned with this, above all, as a phenomenon within the analytic treatment situation and significantly influenced by it. I maintain here that it is of no less significance as a factor within the ongoing developmental processes and of decisive influence on their positive or negative outcome.

The word used within the psychoanalytic terminology for this specific manifestation is "insight" (i.e., the English translation of the German Einsicht). Freud used the term Einsicht almost exclusively for a patient's acknowledgment of the presence and significance of his psychological troubles (Krankheitseinsicht), though it occurs in his Gesammelte Schriften occasionally also as denoting "knowledge" in general, and in one special instance as