ABSTRACT
The success or otherwise of psychoanalysis as a method of psychological treatment cannot be taken to validate or invalidate it as a procedure for the investigation of mental processes believed to be inaccessible to other forms of enquiry or as a theory of psychological functioning. It might be taken, perhaps, as a sign of a growing disenchantment with psychoanalysis as therapy, that so many practising analysts insist that from the outset Sigmund Freud was most cautious concerning the therapeutic potency of his theoretical formulations. Such an achievement, Freud conceded, is not easily attained and, the unfruitful outcome of his brief intervention reveals nothing of the usefulness of psychoanalysis in more promising and more appropriate conditions. No great advance has been made in the years since Freud wrote his literary accounts of clinical consultations. Whereas Freud was fond of comparing psychoanalysis to surgery, psychoanalysis, has never been concerned to any significant extent with the severe end of the disease spectrum.
