New Ways in Psycho-Analytic Technique1

Although I have practised psycho-analysis for twenty years, this is the first time that I have made bold to address you on the subject of psycho-analytic technique. I have been deterred from any earlier venture into publicity by two personal idiosyncrasies. In the first place, I have a very marked incapacity for learning from the mistakes of others. No aphorism, no advice, no warning is of any use: if I am to learn anything from other people's errors I must first of all commit them myself. Having made them my own I may then perhaps rid myself of them. And besides this obstinate lack of mental pliancy I have another peculiarity: I am almost incapable of learning from my own mistakes until I have repeated them several times. Only occasionally, when I have been clumsy in certain minor points of technique, have I been able to avoid my error the second time I recognized it.

Having thus prefaced my remarks, I will pass on to the discussion of certain fundamental problems of analytic technique. Let us direct our attention especially to its heuristic significance. The therapeutic use of analytic technique is a special case of analysis in this its wider aspect. Therefore I do not propose to discuss the psychotherapeutic application of the conclusions at which we shall arrive. This will form the subject of a later, separate discussion. I must acknowledge from the outset that the fundamental features of the technique described here claim a programmatic character. Some of them are new, while others are here formulated, or expressed in scientific terms, for the first time; all alike are derived from analytic practice and accordingly look to verification or criticism only from the standpoint of experience with the living psychological material which we are studying.

Let us begin with a provisional statement of the nature of our technique, which will be not so much a definition as a description. Psycho-analysis is a scientific method based on what survives of our beli