The role of suggestion in the psychoanalytic therapies.

The concept of suggestion in the psychoanalytic therapies is considered as it appears in the literature and in current practice. Bibring's definition of the technique of suggestion is extended differentiating overt and covert suggestion from the effects of unconscious transference fantasies. The use of suggestion as a technique is viewed as antithetical to the aims of exploratory psychoanalytic therapy and presents serious problems in the resolution of transference issues when it is used either inadvertently or as a parameter of the therapy.