The question of diagnostic phase is still relevant in clinical psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical psychotherapies. Orthodox psychoanalysis was not preoccupied with the question of diagnostic assessment. The psychoanalyst simply introduced the methods and techniques of analysis into his clinical work to determine the analysability of a patient. The first decisive developmental thrust on specific psychoanalytic diagnostic assessment followed the shift to relational theories and clinical practice with borderline patients. The Psychiatric Interview introduced by Harry Stack Sullivan (1954) exposed the question of the need for a specific psychoanalytic assessment. The next step was the development of Hartmann’s Ego-Psychology. The Ego (mechanism of regulation between reality and the person), includes the processes of regulating and organizing experiences that are particularly relevant to understanding near-psychotic and psychotic personalities. Examined as such, it enables the differential descriptive interpretative psychodynamic as well as developmental assessment, including the criteria of indication and prognosis.

Rorschach test, Ego psychology, differential diagnosis, borderline phenomena