The unconscious being unknowable, how can the psychoanalyst be certain that the memory he recovers with the help of hypnosis is real, or that his interpretations of the patient’s free associations are correct? How, in other words, can his theories be validated? The patient’s assent or dissent cannot be trusted in this regard since the theory predicts that he or she will “resist” the unveiling of the repressed, as illustrated by the “Dora” case. The scientific controversy that is the analytic cure cannot come to a conclusion since it takes the form of an analysis of resistance to analysis, more specifically, of an analysis of patients’ positive or negative transference onto the analyst. Even a confirmation by the patient of the analyst’s interpretations is not going to settle the matter since it might be yet another ruse of transference resistance. In the end, it is the analyst who decides whether the interpretation – and the theory behind it – is correct or not. Hence the crucial importance in psychoanalytic theory of Freud’s “self-analysis,” since it – and it only – guarantees that the founder initially gained unfettered access to the unconscious.