What is Technique?

The term technique has been used as if everyone understood what they meant by it. For most, an intuitive formulation may have functioned as a more or less effective guide. Some papers, as well as books on the techniques of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, implicitly indicate what they mean by technique. Others make attempts at a loose definition. Rarely is there a rigorous effort made at definition or formulation, or at confronting the question: What Is Technique?

With our current infatuation with and over-emphasis on technique and technology it seems surprising that so little attention has been given to the definition of technique, of the theory of technique and to formulating the structure of the technique process. The subject appears to be a particularly difficult one.

Freud wrote only a few papers on technique between 1912 and 1916 and said little on the subject thereafter. In 1941 Fenichel felt psychoanalysis was too young a science for a book on technique and gave many reasons for his position.¹ Horney never did get to write the book on technique she had long promised herself.

Starting with a list of techniques and their definitions might offer an avenue into this complex subject. It is from a recent publication and concerns techniques used by Freudian psychoanalysts having a broader perspective.

“Techniques involve,” Bibring suggested, “any purposive, more or less typified, verbal or nonverbal behavior on the part of the therapist which intends to affect the patient in the direction of the (intermediary or final) goals of the treatment… He then distinguished five basic therapeutic techniques, each with its curative agency: (1) suggestion, acting through resultant beliefs, impulses or action); (2) abreaction, producing relief from acute tension; (3) manipulation, favoring the progress of treatment or producing changes in adjustment; (4) clarification (Carl Rogers), providing insight into phenomena that operate on the conscious and preconscious level; and (5) insi