Diversity and Direct/on in Psychoanalytic Technique, by Fred Pine,  Yale University Press, 1998,  234 ps.

In general, books that address the issues of psychoanalytic technique fall into one of two categories; they either provide a kind of cookbook approach that provides the novice analyst (or the more anxious senior analyst) with a proposed way of addressing the issues that commonly come up analytic treatment, or they provide encyclopedic overviews of certain technical aspects of technique such as working with the transference or with resistance in psychoanalysis. What these books generally have in common is that they originate in a specific analytic orientation, such as contemporary Freudian or modern relational theory. Diversity and Direction in Psychoanalytic Technique fits into neither of these categories. What the author is attempting to provide, in this compact volume, is a way of thinking about what we do, why we do it, and when we do it. Expanding on the theses that Dr. Pine put forth in Developmental Theory and Clinical Process and Drive, Ego, Self and Object, the author argues that in order for our analytic treatment of our patients to be effective, we need to be open to and aware of many theories and developmental perspectives. Pathology, according to Pines, needs to be viewed from both developmental and conflict orientations so that conflict, defect, and deficit are all incorporated in how we think about our patients. This would in turn encourage us to embrace a wide variety of techniques, using in each hour what would be most effective with this particular patient at this point in the analytic work.

The way of working that Pines suggests is firmly grounded in what he calls the “basic anatomy” of our work: neutrality, abstinence, relative anonymity, use of the couch, free association, and interpretation. To these classical positions Pine has added “attention to the here and now, to enactments, to countertransference in its positive (informative) form, to the two-person psychology of the analytic exchange, and then to the question of self-disclosure” (p. 11).