Greenson (1969) tells of a patient in his fifth year of analysis who, after an interpretation by his analyst, hesitatingly said that he had something to add. It was a difficult thing to say, so difficult that he would have preferred to send the thought back to where it had come from, but then he realised that he had been making this criticism for years. Mr. K. took a deep breath and said: “You talk a bit too much and you tend to exaggerate”. He went on to add: “It would be much easier for me to get angry, to tell you that you are talking through your hat, that you are off the track, or just not answer at all. But it is terribly hard for me to tell you what I am thinking, because I know that it will hurt your feelings”. At this point the analyst, who by now was rightly curious about why it would be easier for the patient to get angry than to tell him what he was thinking, came to understand that getting angry was