In the first place: When we undertake to cure a patient, to free him from the symptoms of his malady, he confronts us with a vigorous, tenacious resistance that lasts during the whole time of the treatment. That is so peculiar a fact that we cannot expect much credence for it. The best thing is not to mention this fact to the patient's relatives, for they never think of it otherwise than as a subterfuge on our part in order to excuse the length or the failure of our treatment. The patient, moreover, produces all the phenomena of this resistance without even recognizing it as such; it is always a great advance to have brought him to the point of understanding this conception and reckoning with it. Just consider, this patient suffers from his symptoms and causes those about him to suffer with him. He is willing, moreover, to take upon himself so many sacrifices of time, money, effort and self-denial in order to be freed. And yet he struggles, in the very interests of his malady, against one who would help him. How improbable this assertion must sound! And yet it is so, and if we are reproached with its improbability, we need only answer that this fact is not without its analogies. Whoever goes to a dentist with an unbearable toothache may very well find himself thrusting away the dentist's arm when the man makes for his sick tooth with a pair of pincers. The resistance which the patient shows is highly varied, exceedingly subtle, often difficult to recognize, Protean-like in its manifold changes of form. It means that the doctor must become suspicious and be constantly on his guard against the patient. In psychoanalytic therapy we make use, as you know, of that technique which is already familiar to you from the interpretation of dreams. We tell the patient that without further reflection he should put himself into a condition of calm self-observation and that he must then communicate whatever results this introspection gives him--feelings, thoughts, reminiscences, in the order in which they appear to his mind. At the same time, we warn him expressly against yielding to any motive which would induce him to choose or exclude any of his thoughts as they arise, in whatever way the motive may be couched and however it may excuse him from telling us the thought: "that is too unpleasant," or "too indiscreet" for him to tell; or "it is too unimportant," or "it does not belong here," "it is nonsensical." We impress upon him the fact that he must skim only across the surface of his consciousness and must drop the last vestige of a critical attitude toward that which he finds. We finally inform him that the result of the treatment and above all its length is dependent on the conscientiousness with which he follows this basic rule of the analytic technique. We know, in fact, from the technique of interpreting dreams, that of all the random notions which may occur, those against which such