GETTING REAL IN ANALYSIS

A detailed clinical example is used to illustrate how reality testing can create rather than foreclose opportunities for analytic investigat ion. It is proposed that effective analysis of transference within the treatment relationship requires close and explicit attention to consi derations of reality. The author reconsiders certain conceptions of a special psychoanalytic reality, of regression in clinical analysis, an d of the nature of free association, suggesting that they tend to disc ourage the realism necessary to productive psychoanalytic work. He und erlines the importance of ongoing reference to therapeutic outcome as an aspect of reality.