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In order to practice therapeutic psychoanalysis, the psychoanalyst must be able to carry out certain technical procedures upon the patient and upon himself. In order to execute these procedures properly the psychoanalyst must make use of certain psychological processes which occur within himself. For it is the goings-on in his own mind which are the most valuable means the psychoanalyst possesses for gaining insight into the mind of another human being. As a consequence, the skill of a psychoanalyst is inextricably tied up with his own unconscious mind and the degree to which it is accessible for use by his conscious ego.
High intelligence and cultural level are indeed required of the analyst, but an available and comprehensible unconscious mind is even more important. The requirement that all psychoanalysts must have experienced psychoanalytic therapy before they are allowed to treat a patient psychoanalytically is aimed not only at giving the analyst personal conviction of the validity of unconscious factors and at desensitizing him in areas where his own problems might distort his judgment: the analyst's personal analysis has the ultimate aim of making available to his conscious ego the important unconscious drives, defenses, fantasies, and conflicts of his own infantile life and their later derivatives. Some of these conflicts will have been resolved, some will have been modified into more adaptive forms, others will have remained unchanged but approachable. What is crucial for the practicing psychoanalyst is that his unconscious conflicts are controllable and accessible for use in his work with his patients.
The degree of resolution will undoubtedly influence the skill which the psychoanalyst will be able to employ. His ability to
achieve instinctual satisfaction without conflict will increase his ego's ability to neutralize certain functions, enhance the autonomous ego functions and adaptiveness. The same is true for the intrasystemic conflicts (Hartmann, 195