The ultimate paradox of logical thinking is that it is self-destroying when it is too sedulously cultivated. It asserts its own prerogatives by clamping down certain restrictive frames of reference upon the activity of the mind, and presently ends in impoverishing the activity which it purports to guide into creative channels. It becomes intolerant of the immediate, unanalyzed, primitive abundance of the mind, and by so doing destroys its own source. More seriously, too, for the mind which is engaged with social life, logical procedures exclude from the mind the most important data about the self. Directed thinking, whether about the self or something else as an object, is impatient of the seemingly trivial, and this impatience with the seemingly trivial is the rationally acceptable guise in which the impulse to avoid rigorous self-scrutiny gets itself accepted. The mind which is freely fantasying produces distasteful evidence of the facts about the self which the socialized self wants to avoid. This is why free-fantasy is not learned by rote, but achieved through trying experiences, usually under prolonged supervision. There are wide individual differences in acquiring the technique of free-fantasy. Logical controls are often so gradually released that progress is almost imperceptible for several weeks of daily contact with a psychoanalytic interviewer. Frequently, of course, the logical controls fall away quite rapidly, and the exposure of the underlying preoccupations proceeds apace. Freud developed the technique, and drills his subjects, largely in relation to their dreams, but this is in no sense its exclusive application. The purpose of the psychoanalytic interview is not served if the patient is merely relieved of a few annoying symptoms; its purpose is to equip him with a means of handling his mind which will enable him to go it alone. In developing the free-fantasy procedure, Freud added a powerful tool to the repertory of those who would use their mind with some hope of disentangling themselves from the compulsive domination of many vestigial remains of their “private” histories. It is quite possible to train people to use the free-fantasy method with considerable success and to outfit them with a device which they can use in the ordinary problems of professional and private life.[7] The instances which I shall presently adduce are from the fantasies which were produced by a judge in the course of a series of interviews which he undertook after his curiosity about the method had been aroused by the therapeutic treatment of a member of his family. Any specific allusions are disguised.