When Kohut (1977) first introduced his two-phase approach to psychoanalytic treatment, he wrote:

Every interpretation, in other words, and every reconstruction, consists of two phases; first the analysand must realize that he has been understood; only then, as a second step, will the analyst demonstrate to the analysand the specific dynamic and genetic factors that explain the psychological content he had first empathically grasped… In some analyses—though by no means in all—the analyst will even have to realize that a patient whose childhood self-object had failed traumatically in this area will require long periods of “only” understanding before the second step—interpretation, the dynamic-genetic explanations given by the analyst—can be usefully and acceptably taken [p. 88].