The empirical material assembled in this book has appeared in the course of prolonged interviews with individuals under unusually intimate conditions. This method of the prolonged interview has now had a history of some thirty years in the form devised by Freud, but so far there are very few efforts to objectify the events which transpire there. Otto Rank has written a series of studies of the "interview situation" which is the most important effort so far made to characterize the distinctive features of the method. But the empirical material which is so far reported does not rest upon the verbatim recording of what happens, except in a few specimen instances of highly pathological cases, and attempts are only now being made to record some of the principal physiological changes in the subject.
It will be remembered that Freud learned to predict the future course of reminiscence by watching word slips, random movements, and many other acts which were formerly dismissed as chance occurrences. He also found that he could abbreviate the laborious efforts of the patient to recall the traumatic (the original) episode by proposing various interpretations. It is at this point that the cautious physician and psychologist have picked serious quarrels with psychoanalytical findings. They allege
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