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Rank's recent writings dealing with the technical side of psycho-analysis have aroused general interest in two directions: they have laid far more stress than usual on the factor of transference or, as Rank calls it, the 'analytical situation', and in the second place they have urged us to pay more attention than has been done hitherto to the part played by the analyst in that situation as mother. I have already had frequent occasion to point out the importance and practical value of the first of these points, and I have made every effort to convince myself equally of the validity of the second. One obstacle to my doing so was that Rank had hitherto omitted to give any precise account of the technique employed by him. Thus it was with great interest that I (and many others too, no doubt) welcomed the appearance of a work from his pen upon the technique of psycho-analysis. Unfortunately, however, the feelings left by my study of this book have been almost entirely those of disappointment, and the same will probably have been true of many of those who have hitherto worked as his colleagues. To begin with, the title of the book gives a false impression: what is discussed in it is not the technique of psycho-analysis but a modification of it which departs so widely from what has hitherto been practised that it would have been more straightforward to have described the book as the Rank technique (or perhaps as the 'Birth Technique') for the treatment of the neuroses. The actual title may mislead many people who are unaware of the various phases through which Rank has passed, but who know of the long and fruitful period during which he worked with Professor Freud.
The characteristic feature of the whole book is its tendency to exaggerate what are in themselves (in part, at least) interesting views and not infrequently to press the exaggeration ad absurdum. In the book in which Rank collaborated with me, Entwicklungsziele der Psychoanalyse (1924), a whole chapter o