ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic technique is, as Rickman put it, directed towards the “removal of the major obstacles to the action of the integrative processes which operate within every living organism, so that the integrative processes will in the end get the upper hand without further analytical aid”. The attitude that an analyst adopts towards the curative process in psychoanalysis will determine his attitude to his patient and his handling of the analytic relationship. If he accepts the hypothesis that symptoms, character disorders, and the fear and pain associated with them arise primarily from unresolved unconscious conflicts and the damage caused to the patient’s ego by the operation of defensive mechanisms brought into play as a result, he will also accept that he can only really help his patient insofar as he can enable that patient to understand and accept emotionally the reality of his unconscious experiences.
