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This book comprises presentations and lectures given on various occasions. Being independent papers and bringing forward divergent points of view, each one would deserve a separate treatment. Here I have to be content with delineating the most central themes.
The book commences with an essay on the fundamental tools of psychoanalysis. The author's conception of the psychoanalytical method and its object of study is put down illustratively and accurately. Ikonen distinguishes four basic tools of psychoanalysis: self-observation of the analysand, analysis of resistance, interpretation and transference.
These are not a collection of parallel, equal or interchangeable tools. The analysand's self-observation is the starting point of psychoanalysis and at the same time its goal. Self-observation endows all other tools with meaning and content.
For a start, Ikonen states two fundamental points. Firstly, psychoanalysis has originated from “the realisation that a person will grasp where his symptoms derive from, if allowed to study his mind in peace”. Secondly, “the primary investigator of an individual's psyche is the individual himself”, because “only he, not others, can observe his psyche directly.”
In his task, the psychoanalyst is totally dependent on the self-observation of the analysand. “The work of the psychoanalyst, practical psychoanalysis, is to assist self-observation.” Psychoanalysis is based on an agreement