Freud's papers on technique were written at a time when he could express supreme confidence in the psychoanalytic process, based on his theory of libido. Freud was far less sanguine about the practices of many contemporary analysts; consequently the papers contain far more don't's than do's. From the vantage point of today, these papers portray a transitional stage in psychoanalysis, an age of innocence, in comparison to the complexities of our current view of the interaction between analyst and analysand.