ABSTRACT
The quality good or bad is, of course, not always a constant one in respect to an individual's relation to a particular object. It depends on the resultant of forces within the personality and, on the inter-play between the forces in the external or social field and the internal or personal field, many of the latter forces being unconscious. The view that the Psychiatric Interview is a simple personal relationship, particularly when the two participating units are in the Army, ignores important though admittedly complicated psychological factors. The terms good object and bad object have no moral connotations whatsoever. They refer to the kind of relationship, positive or negative, subsisting between this particular individual and that particular object or class of objects. At the particular Board the psychiatric interview was usually held in a sumptuously furnished, fantastic "Chinese Room" with a fine view; the pictures on the walls, were restful to the eye and did not inflame the imagination.
