ABSTRACT
Reversible perspective is evidence of pain; the patient reverses perspective to make a dynamic situation static. The work of the analyst is to restore dynamic to a static situation and so make development possible. The prolonged resort to reversible perspective is thus accompanied by delusions and hallucinations that are difficult to detect because they are both static and evanescent. In reversible perspective acceptance by the analyst of the possibility of an impairment of a capacity for pain can help avoidance of errors that might lead to disaster. The case for acceptance of pain as an element of psychoanalysis is reinforced by the position it occupies in Freud’s theories of the pleasure–pain principle. It is evident that the dominance of the reality principle, and indeed its establishment, is imperilled if the patient swings over to the evasion of pain rather than to its modification; yet modification is jeopardized if the patient’s capacity for pain is impaired.
