ABSTRACT
The problem of the Other is crucial in psychotherapy, yet is covered over by most theoretical writing in the field which is occupied with various modes of treatment that endeavour to cure a pathology. Usually the texts of psychotherapy are part of a theoretical system and merely attempt to elaborate or add to it; its concept of cure and its methods of obtaining that cure are subsumed under the system. The cured individual and the psychotherapeutic system are simply correlated with each other. The system defines what cure is-integration and individuation, attainment of the depressive position, the ability to carry on one’s own self-analysis, and so on-and the cure occurs because of the correct application of the method of cure generated by the system. As one influential book puts it, analysis depends on ‘the state of mind of the analyst’; this is embodied in ‘the psycho-analytic attitude’ and ‘the foundation of this attitude must be dedication to the psycho-analytic method’. ‘The value of the analytic process derives from the degree to which it is determined by the structure of the mind.’1
