ABSTRACT
For the therapeutic process to achieve rapid and enduring change in a patient's character, the intrapsychic system must be in a state of disequilibrium. S. Freud considered the process of working through to be the feature of psychoanalytic treatment that distinguished it from other, more suggestive forms of therapy. To facilitate working through and character change, it has been suggested that changes need to occur in both the internal representations of self and other and in concrete, observable behavior. A reduction in anxiety is undoubtedly a goal of psychotherapy, but how can therapists help their patients achieve this goal? By focusing intensively on the negative, self-defeating consequences of a reliance on character defenses, Dr. Habib Davanloo has offered us a powerful alternative strategy. As defenses are abandoned, patients experience considerable depth of feeling. Davanloo insists that interpretive work, conceptualized as a cognitive re-analysis of the process, must follow these emotionally charged experiences within the therapeutic setting.
