ABSTRACT
The term analysis commonly covers all the different methods that have so far been listed, and an analyst is then thought of as a person who uses one or more of them. This chapter shows that it corresponds to the 'stage' of elucidation in Carl Jung's scheme of therapy. In analytical practice it is a method of thought, combined with observation of data produced by patients, aiming to define simple entities, called primary, which explain complex symptoms, character disorders and normal psychic functioning. Full analysis means, then, that the primary entities have been reached and the patient's psychology explained in terms of them. The importance of the patient's history can give rise to the idea that analysis is essentially a historical process and that analysis is to be thought of as nearer to the methods used by historians than any other discipline.
