It is customary to find in a book o

It is customary to find in a book of collected papers on psychoanalysis, a number of case histories; this book is no exception. Ostensiblythere is an account of the patient’s history, some detailed reports ofsessions with the patient’s associations and the interpretations theanalyst has given. It has always seemed to me that such reports areopen to the objection that the narrative and the interpretations givenare only two different ways of saying the same thing, or two different things said about the same fact. With the years my suspicion hasripened into conviction. I have attempted to formulate this convictionin three books, Learning from Experience, Elements of Psycho-Analysis,and Transformations, each one carrying the discussion a little furtherand making the formulations more precise.