ABSTRACT
When an adaptive context is directly mentioned in the patient's associations, the therapist can generally assume that on an unconscious level the patient wishes to express himself or herself in meaningful fashion. There are many sessions, however, in which direct allusions to intervention contexts do not appear. In these sessions, it is incumbent upon the therapist to consider carefully all known intervention contexts and to search actively for derivative or encoded representations (portrayals) of these contexts in the patient's material. If the material should also contain a meaningful derivative complex and indicators—a need for intervention—the therapist would begin the intervention with the encoded representation of the relevant adaptation-evoking context. Perhaps the most important means by which the therapist recognizes an encoded portrayal of an intervention context is the prior assessment of the major unconscious implications of that context.
