ABSTRACT
How does one begin psychotherapy? Before the therapist has become experienced, he may well feel somewhat apprehensive at having a new patient referred to him for treatment. Will he be able to do anything to help? Will he be able to understand what the patient is talking about? Will the patient realise his inexperience? What will the patient think of him? These apprehensions, and others which are similar, are to a certain extent justified. The therapist is likely to be confronted with a wide variety of people with whose style of life and mode of expression he is not necessarily familiar, from kitchen porters to university teachers. Many of the patients he sees will be older than he is, and some will be more intelligent. All this matters less than the inexperienced therapist commonly supposes. Provided that he is genuinely interested in the patient as a person, he is likely to be able to overcome any initial difficulties which unfamiliarity with the patient's type of social background may pose. Occasionally, if the patient comes from an entirely different culture, the basic social assumptions of the therapist and patient may be so widely discrepant that communication becomes impossible, but this is rare. Such problems will be discussed at a later point. Let us for the moment assume that the therapist has referred to him a patient who does not present any obvious problem in communication. How shall he go about conducting the first interview with such a patient?
