ABSTRACT
The whole of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy is based upon the assumption that it is possible for one person to resolve a problem through talking to another. The core of our distress lies in the fact that we do not know the reason for it. This is what we mean when we use that pale, passionless word “problem” to describe a situation when we decide to visit a psychoanalyst or a psychotherapist. There seems to be some inherent sense that the act of communicating with another will help to alleviate the distress. Very early on Sigmund Freud discovered that declaring to the patient the hidden cause of his distress was no good. He says that in the earliest days of analytic technique we took an intellectualist view of the situation. The chapter also enunciates higher-order principles which require the intellectual capacity to abstract and yet, paradoxically, grasping one of these principles is only possible through a personal act of comprehension.
