ABSTRACT
Since this is a book about individual psychotherapy, its emphasis has been upon the therapeutic interaction between the psychotherapist and his patient, rather than upon internal processes of healing taking place within the isolated individual. Preparation of a second edition gives me the opportunity of adding a chapter which draws attention to some of these processes. In Chapter 8, I wrote: 'Transference, (and I am now using the term in its widest sense, that is, as comprising the whole gamut of the changing relationship between the patient and the therapist) is the most important single factor in therapy.' I still believe this to be true; but I have also come to realise the importance of other factors in healing which are not so closely connected with a person's relationships, either with a therapist or with others. Because modern techniques of psychotherapy have concentrated upon object-relationships, we have tended to forget that relations with other people do not constitute the whole of any person's significant experience. Freud defined psychic health in terms of the ability to love and the ability to work. Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts have emphasised the former at the expense of the latter.
