ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author emphasizes that he respond to any particularly positive, hopeful, negative, or pessimistic ideas about the patient, their diagnosis, or prognosis that occur to him during a consultation as possibly reflective of an emerging countertransference-transference engagement. He describes a different model, a different "concrete puzzle solution", for doing a consultation. The author suggests that prospective analysands can be grouped descriptively as, inhibited; enactment prone; and as too disturbed and disturbing for one. In On Beginning an Analysis, he describes the process of making the recommendation of analysis to two reluctant patients. The author emphasizes that "particularly in the introductory phase, it is the analyst's attitude toward the patient and his behavior and verbal associations rather than the frequency and or the use of the couch that is the essential characteristic of the analytic method".
