ABSTRACT
The basic model of communication in therapy dictates a method of working with the patient's material that will sort out its various elements and permit the unconscious basis of the patient's illness to be understood in depth. As the authors have seen, it is necessary both to identify the stimulus for the patient's behaviours and associations and to understand the conscious and unconscious implications of that stimulus. One must also identify the patient's reactions to the stimulus—most critically, the patient's symptomatic responses, because these will be the target for the therapist's intervention and the focus of interpretive work. The patient's responses must be separated into two interrelated classes: symptomatic and communicative. It should be recognized that the stress on indicators, adaptive contexts, and derivative perceptions in this chapter reflects the fact that problems in listening that are modifiable through teaching exercises are accessible only at the cognitive level.
