ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on to study some aspects of psychotherapy, as distinct from analysis, with a view to finding out what happens. It examines the value of the therapist's having an active attitude to the developmental possibilities inherent in various kinds of symbols and symbolic occurrences. The chapter shows that the nature of effective interaction is the same whether the treatment is labelled analysis or psychotherapy. The therapist is responsible for discerning the prospective meaning of the phenomenon being used as a symbol by the patient. On the basis of his greater consciousness he can, with a symbolic attitude, make possible an experience of transition from lesser to greater awareness of the previously unconscious forces at work, which are distorting current events and behaviour. 'The creative illusion which analysts call the transference' is just as necessary, usable and creative in psychotherapy as in analysis.
