ABSTRACT
In March 1960 I wrote a small contribution to a paper by Dr Sylvia Payne given to the London 1952 Club on the subject of ‘What Do We Expect from a Psycho-Analytic Treatment’.1 I wrote that she says, as I understand it, that what we expect, hope for, from psychoanalytic treatment is an enlarging of consciousness in the particular direction of discovering, establishing, the capacity for inner observation which sees, becomes aware not only of what one is experiencing, and so producing a quantitative change, in that repression is lifted so that more of one’s wishes are known, but also a qualitative change, both in the inner observer and what is observed. She quotes Einstein on the scientific attitude to show how the observer becomes unjudging, and she quotes Rappaport partly because of his description of how new conscious ‘qualities appear in the transition from primary to secondary process. I said that as I understand it she is saying that amongst the conscious qualities that can emerge is the fact that the observer is driven to recognize the existence of unconscious ideas and processes. I said I suppose that we would all agree that a great step is taken when the observer does recognize this gap in self-knowledge, this bit of nothingness, and also discovers that it can enter into a relationship with this gap, this inner unknown. Also that this is a discovery which is perhaps as momentous as the earlier step which she talks about-that first recognition of a gap in one’s own consciousness which turns out to be filled by another consciousness, another person.
