The equal role of delight and frustration in the development of a sense of reality

In Chapter 1 I argued for the need, with certain patients, to stay with the whatness of experience rather than the whyness. This chapter adds a further dimension to the question: namely, the issue of the content of such descriptive interpretations. I suggest that interpretations that draw attention to, or amplify, positive experiences or phantasies may be as central to analytic work as is attention to the negative. It therefore adds to, but in no way attempts to replace, the usual psychoanalytic assumption (Bion, 1959; Freud, 1911) of the relationship between learning and frustration.