You surely know that the understanding of psychoanalytic truths is in direct proportion to the progress one has made in oneself. If one has neurotic symptoms there will be a failure of understanding somewhere. Where, past events have already shown.
Source - C.G. Jung, Letter to Freud, 3 January 1913. The Freud/Jung Letters: The Correspondence between Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung (Princeton University Press 1974), p. 540.
I tell my patients that the goal of analysis is for them to know themselves and trust their own intuition and experience. I find that most pathology ends up being expressed through denying one's own perceptions, needs, and feelings. Getting better, regardless of diagnosis, centers on helping patients to listen to their gut reactions and learn to follow them in a constructive way. The notion of constructive expression of emotion depends also on a realistic view of the consequences of behavior. For example, a person who is quick to fall in love or develop infatuations and other impulsive idealized attachments may feel a strong desire to act on those feelings whenever they occur. While this may work out at times, it can equally be disastrous and surely threatens the individual's ability to remain in a committed relationship over time. Thus the realization of deep feelings of attraction and desire must be balanced with an equally deep appreciation of the potentially painful consequences of acting on those feelings.
What can one expect of oneself as a person of a specific sort in this world?
What are the costs and dangers of gratification; the consequences of error and protest; the prospects for success and failure, reward and punishment, pleasure and pain? Any notion of trusting one's intuition and feelings must rest on this balance between internal and external reality. I can honestly say that I have never treated anyone who did not know the "truth" about themselves and the people closest to them, no matter what mental gymnastics they might go through to deny or split off that truth.
Source - Karen J. Maroda, Seduction, Surrender, and Transformation: Emotional Engagement in the Analytic Process (The Analytic Press 1998), p. 40.
Art: Art: Lidia Wylangowska, 'Little Blue Birdie'