ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud regards the inevitable repetitions as an invaluable tool to help the patient work through his infantile past since that troubled history is played out again in effigy through an "artificial illness" in the here and now of the transference neurosis. However, the transference neurosis develops slowly as though it had a timetable of its own and the analyst "has nothing else to do than wait and let things take their course". Freud counsels patience with this process and the analyst must curb any tendencies that distract him from paying exclusive attention to what is on the patient's mind in the moment. Freud's advice elaborates his recommendations two years earlier that the analyst must adopt a stance in which his unconscious is a "receptive organ" to the analysand's communicating unconscious and that he, the analyst, ought to give himself over to his "unconscious memory."
