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Interpretations seem to matter most (at least in the case of Mrs. C) when the analyst feels included in the patient's thoughts. During hours of this kind (Related hours, scoring high on the cooccurrence of first- and second-person pronouns such as me/you), the analyst's interpretations are more comprehensive and probing; he intervenes earlier and more often within the session; and his specific interpretations have a greater effect on the patient's associations, as measured by an increased frequency of specific discourse markers. Low-scoring hours, with relatively few pronominal references to the analyst, were characterized by more superficial interpretations; later and fewer interventions; a greater tendency for the analyst to misunderstand the patient's productions; and a decreased effect of specific interventions. Special care was taken to protect the findings from the dangers of suggestion (the Achensee question).

Psychoanalytic facts are almost always capable of being put into words and they include things the patient tells us, things we tell the patient, and things we tell our colleagues. They include various combinations of observation and theory, evidence and hearsay, dream and reality. In contrast to the more usual facts of the everyday world, a psychoanalytic fact is almost never based on pure observation and it is partly for this reason that a dispute over facts frequently conceals a dispute over theory. It also follows that bare facts are almost never presented by themselves; when they are presented (as in a publication), they are almost never quite the same as when experienced in the session. Some meanings are lost in publication; others are inadvertently added by the reader, as he tries to fill in the gaps of a vague report. 'Clinical' facts (which have just been described) should be distinguished from 'contextual' facts, which colour the way we hear the patient's reports, and from 'latent' facts, which cannot be detected by the analyst in the session but must be measured by other techniques. Because the proportion of theory to observation is probably greater in clinical facts than in latent facts, the latter may provide more reliable measures of a clinical happening. Greater reliance on latent facts may also reduce our dependence on metaphor and smooth the transition from clinical moment to published account.

A growing body of research on the way children change their forms of thinking and views of the world from around the ages of 2 to 5 strongly suggests that something called a 'theory of mind' is acquired during this time which significantly affects the course of language acquisition, moral development, interactive problem-solving and other cognitive attributes. As we learn more about the adult varieties of this theory of mind we begin to realise their implications for psychoanalysis. This paper considers such issues as: what kind of theory of mind is assumed by our reliance on the Basic Rule? What kind of theory is required to understand the usual range of standard interventions? How can deficiencies in the analysand's theory of mind interfere with standard interpretations? As research on theory of mind makes us increasingly sensitive to the importance of different forms of thinking about thinking, we can apply many of these insights to common problems of psychoanalytic technique.

The rhetorical voice of psychoanalysis has a long history and has only recently come to be seen as a special feature of the theory. Its beginnings can be found in Freud's earliest pleadings for the usefulness of metaphor and analogy, although he felt that they were largely provisional and would eventually be replaced by more durable concepts. We have begun to see problems in replacing the central metaphors; the rhetorical base of psychoanalysis may be more enduring than we thought. While our metaphors may never provide epistemic access to the stuff of the mind, they can and do point to specific clinical encounters. Ways must be found to expand our rhetorical treasure chest and develop language even better suited to our concepts and observations.