ABSTRACT
Loosened construction also sets the stage for creative thinking that is to come later. The loosening releases facts, long taken as self-evident, from their rigid conceptual moorings. The psychoanalysts, whose technique always includes much loosening, encourage relaxation by means of the couch and the clearing of the room of distracting objects. The use of loosening techniques in psychotherapy involves some real hazards. The psychoanalytic procedures in psychotherapy, because of their almost universal employment of loosening techniques, frequently get therapists into trouble. Psychotherapeutic loosening is indeed one of the most important procedures in the psychotherapist’s armamentarium. Since it is a feature of creative thinking it may be skilfully employed in the more creative approaches to psychotherapy. The poorly trained therapist, therefore, needs to be particularly cautious about using classical psychoanalytical procedures. The psychoanalyst, having encouraged the client to loosen his construction, takes steps to get him to lift certain vaguely formulated ideas into the realm of ‘consciousness’.
