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In this chapter I put into juxtaposition two contrasting statements, each of which in its own way illustrates communication. There are many kinds of inter-communication and a classification of them seems hardly necessary since classification involves the making of artificial boundaries.
The first illustration I wish to give is in the form of a therapeutic consultation with a girl at an early stage of adolescence. This consultation had a result in that it paved the way for a thoroughgoing analysis which in three years could be counted a success. The point of giving the case, however, is connected not so much with the outcome as with the fact that any case description of this kind illustrates the way in which the psychotherapist acts as a mirror.
I wish to follow up this case description with a theoretical statement illustrating the importance of communication through cross-identifications.
Patients who have a restricted capacity for introjective or projective identifying present serious difficulties for the psychotherapist who must needs be subjected to what is called acting out and transference phenomena that have instinctual backing. In such cases the main hope of the therapist is to increase the patient's range in respect of cross-identifications, and this comes not so much through the work of interpretation as through certain specific experiences in the analytic sessions. To arrive at these experiences the therapist must reckon with a time factor, and therapeutic results of an instantaneous kind cannot be expected. Interpretations, however accurate and well-timed, cannot provide the whole answer.