ABSTRACT
An advantage of believing that observations are the foundation of scientific method is that the conditions in which they are made can be stated and then produced. The simplicity of this has its appeal for the psycho-analyst: an analytic situation is presumed to exist and interpretations of the observations made in that situation are then reported. If the author pictorialize the statement 'the conventional view of an observation' to be a container, like a sphere, and the 'psycho-analytic observation' as something that cannot be contained within it, the author had a model that will do very well not only for the 'conventional view', to represent his feelings about a 'psycho-analytic situation', but also for the 'psycho-analysis' that it cannot contain. It will also serve as a model for his feelings about certain patients. This is a characteristic of the mental domain: it cannot be contained within the framework of psycho-analytic theory.
