ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the relationship between thinking and symbol-formation. Dependence on the mother has proved relatively unsatisfactory, and dependence on the mind and on thinking has taken the place of reliance on the good-enough mother. The chapter explores the area in which there is retained some degree of success of the defence, in which thinking acts as a substitute for mother-care, and in which there develops a false self in the shape of an exploited intellect. The analyst must be able to accept the role of failing analyst as he accepts all other roles that arise out of the patient's transference neuroses and psychoses. Psycho-analysis does not cure, though it is true that a patient may make use of psycho-analysis, and may achieve with adjunctive process a degree of integration and socialisation and self-discovery which he would not or could not have achieved without it.
