ABSTRACT
According to the age and the maturational stage of the infant, the parent is engaged in preventing clinical breakdown from which recovery occurs only through organisation and reorganisation of defences. It is by minute-to-minute care that the parent is laying down the basis of the future mental health of the infant. In the psycho-analysis of the case well chosen for classical analysis the clinical distress comes in the form of anxiety, associated with memories and dreams and phantasies. In a psychoanalytic statement of theory analysts say that defences are formed in relation to anxiety. From this it follows that the successful outcome of an analysis depends, not on the patient's understanding of the meaning of the defences, but on the patient's ability, through the analysis, and in the transference, to re-experience this intolerable anxiety on account of which defences were organised.
