ABSTRACT
The therapeutic indications for psychoanalysis constitute a theme worth discussing, not only because of its practical importance, but because as soon as it is studied it reveals a theoretical background of real complexity. Indications and contraindications were lucidly established by Freud in the conference of the Medical College in Vienna on 12 December 1904. In the course of his lecture Freud emphasized the contraindications for psychoanalysis, in order to limit it finally to its specific field, the neuroses. In this conference, and also in the earlier work commissioned by Lowenfeld, Freud affirmed—and it is a very original thought—that an indication for psychoanalytic therapy should arise not only from the subject's illness but also from his personality. This difference continues to be valid: an indication for psychoanalysis must consider the person no less than the diagnosis. Freud was the first to apply the psychoanalytic method to children, in treating Little Hans, a child of five years with a phobia about horses.
