ABSTRACT
Fürstenau (1977b) proposed the term ‘praxeology’ to describe the effort to give theoretical underpinning to clinical practice. I now wish to venture a praxeology of inpatient analytic psychotherapy, hoping in the process to answer the question I raised in the introduction, namely: how can psychoanalytic methods be put to work in a hospital, with its complex interweave of staffing and organizational arrangements? The purpose of the analytic approach is to reactivate in transference patterns of relating which are an unconscious replay of infantile conflict. Analytic work then sheds light on the meaning of experience and behaviour, enabling the patient to gain insight into his internal object world. Discoveries made within the parameters of the analytic situation open the door to new experience (cf. Chapter 2).
