Indications and Contraindications for the Application of the "Standard Technique"1

Despite the great number of papers on technique and its theories, and attempts at conceptualization, there seem to be a paucity of papers devoted to the role of activity in psychoanalysis. I should like to present some clinical problems in technique which necessitate deviation from the standard model as presented by Eissler (7), as well as my theoretical considerations for doing so. In connection with this whole problem I wonder at the value of continued speculation as to what is psychotherapeutically oriented psychoanalysis and what is psychoanalysis itself. One finds psychiatrists who have a "couch phobia, " who feel that they will be accused of misrepresenting themselves as psychoanalysts if they have a couch in their offices; as if the couch would be the most essential prerequisite for being a psychoanalyst. The very cropping up of papers about this theme of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy reveals the defensive nature of the problem itself. I firmly believe that there is no psychoanalysis without some so-called psychotherapeutic admixture. To be specific, in every psychoanalytic situation, however optimal the transference and countertransference climate might be, there arise situations where the analyst, willy nilly, gives advice, prohibits acting out within or without the analytic situation, suggests, and so on. This may happen even as a result of slight inflections of the voice or by being silent. We have, then, in every analytic situation actually a spectrum of more or less "psychotherapeutic" addition to the psychoanalytic