ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author attempts to offer an account of what constitutes a thorough initial assessment of a potential patient for psychodynamic psychotherapy. He provides his comments into the categories of forming early impressions, assessing psychopathology, assessing psychological mindedness and other ego functions, and assessing the patient’s motivation and realities that might impact upon the feasibility of proper treatment. The author describes how pooling the four sets of data helps choose a treatment modality and the process of making recommendations to the patient, answering his questions, and, through all this, beginning to set the ground rules for treatment being undertaken. Conducting these tasks is hardly restricted to gathering objective information; the therapist’s subjective experience plays a key role throughout the evaluation process. The psychotherapeutic enterprise, despite its imaginary and imaginative dimensions, must be firmly anchored in reality.
