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After having discussed the analysis of resistance and transference, it would seem to be in order to take the psychoanalytic situation as our focal point. The analysis of the psychoanalytic situation offers us an opportunity to re-examine many of the procedures and processes we have already described from a different vantage point. By converging on the interrelationship of patient, analyst, and setting, we may gain additional insight into the unique power of the psychoanalytic situation as a therapeutic instrumentality. Furthermore, it may provide us with another occasion to clarify the complicated interactions among the three essential elements: patient, analyst, and setting. Although their relationship is an interconnected and interdependent one, it is advisable to explore separately each of the three components which constitute the psychoanalytic situation. We shall then ask ourselves: what does each contribute and how does each influence the psychoanalytic situation? (Stone's [1961] book on the subject is suggested as the most comprehensive reference source.)
Only a patient who is strongly motivated will be able to work wholeheartedly and with perseverance in the psychoanalytic situation.
The neurotic symptoms or discordant traits of character must cause sufficient suffering to induce the patient to endure the rigors of psychoanalytic treatment. Curiosity and the wish to understand have to be supplemented by neurotic misery if the patient is to have more than a superficial psychoanalytic experience. He must be willing to bear the distress of revealing his anxiety- and guilt-laden intimate experiences; he must be willing to spend a considerable amount of money and time, give up the secondary gains from his illness, and also forego quick and temporary results.
In recent years, the search for quicker results has led many patients to seek brief psychotherapy, including briefer forms of psychoanalysis. This trend has been encouraged by an increasing n