ABSTRACT
We need some guidelines to tell us how to use the concepts we have derived from the axiom that consciousness is continuous. A small set of principles has wide application. I am dealing here largely with the formal aspects of technique, how and when the analyst interacts with the patient, and only secondarily with the content of the patient's associations. When the analyst attends to the content of the patient's thoughts and feelings, he may frame his understanding from any of several points of view, including, for instance, development, adaptation, genetics, dynamics, and structure. The approach I am suggesting is entirely consistent with this customary view but considers primarily the process of analyzing, why the analyst intervenes when he does and his purpose in doing so. I have come up with a brief list of major principles. I am not sure my list is yet complete or that the principles I list are independent of each other, but the first three of these I can offer are:
The patient is always right.
Analysts don't analyze, patients do.
The patient is doing the best he can.
These statements may seem to be put too frivolously to be taken seriously as principles of technique. Are they principles of any kind, let alone psychoanalytic principles? Nevertheless, although I have put them colloquially, I mean them to be taken literally and hope that you too will find them indispensable.
