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In a packed room on Sunday morning, the last day of the San Francisco meeting, an eager crowd gathered to participate in a panel discussion on the question of how we view certain “technical ideals” in light of our evolving understanding of the mind and our ongoing attempt to articulate and refine our ideas about what psychoanalysis is and how we can best make use of it to help our patients.
Mary Margaret McClure, the chair, explained that this panel was originally intended to discuss Freud's technical recommendations of “anonymity, neutrality, and abstinence” and the difficulties that such ideals pose in the current climate of intense debate about the ideals of psychoanalysis, as well as the reality of the challenges we face in contemporary clinical practice. For example, what does it mean to have to live with, let alone live up to, technical ideals that are impossible to live up to, that are unrealizable? What kind of toll does it take on the psychoanalyst, and on the field as a whole, to embrace an ideal that cannot realistically be achieved?
Since it is no longer clear that these technical concepts are the ideals of psychoanalysis in the way they once were, this panel took up the issues of use of the couch, frequency of sessions, and free association. How do we hold these technical recommendations around the frame, and what do they mean in light of our our evolving understanding? Do they define what psychoanalysis is? If we feel that they do, are we in danger not only of being rigid, but of collapsing a larger understanding of what constitutes a psychoanalytic process and how we use it to the benefit of our patients? If our ideals have shifted such that we are not to be bound by constraining technical ideals and now uphold the value of creativity and