ABSTRACT
Freudian theory was elaborated out of Freudian therapy. And in so far as the theory is a summary of clinical experience, nothing can displace it. What is more, as the theory indicates to us analogies between clinical and everyday experience, so it becomes a guide to the world of the normal as well as of the abnormal. But where Freud’s high-level concepts, such as ‘the unconscious’, take on an explanatory role we may inquire whether they help or hinder at this point, or rather how far they help and how far they hinder. Do they in fact still reveal what goes on in the therapeutic situation or do they in some ways conceal and misrepresent it?
