On understanding and not understanding: some technical issues

This paper discusses some technical problems arising from the diverse ways our patients have of making themselves understood or not understood. It aims to show how patients who have reached the depressive position are able to use understanding in a way that is very different from those in the paranoid-schizoid position. It describes particular methods that the latter patients have of avoiding understanding by splitting and projection and attempting unconsciously to draw the analyst into a type of acting out in the transference. It stresses the importance for the analyst, of listening to the patient in terms of the position from which he is operating, so that contact can be achieved and with it real understanding, as opposed to subtle acting out and pseudo-understanding.