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By the fundamental rule of psycho-analytic treatment we mean, as you know, the injunction which we give to our patients that, during the analytic hour, they are to tell us everything which comes into their minds and to conceal none of their thoughts, whatever they may be.
This rule is necessary in our treatment if we are really to get to know the conscious and unconscious material upon which the patient's mind is engaged.
The purpose of the present paper is to set before you certain cases in which the strict application of this rule may very possibly be inexpedient. I shall conclude my remarks by attempting to define the line of conduct which practical experience has taught me to follow in applying this rule in general.
You will doubtless agree that the application of any rule of treatment calls for a certain discreet elasticity of procedure on the part of the therapist if he would avoid achieving precisely the opposite result to that which he intends. Any rule can be reduced to an absurdity. When a patient observes our fundamental rule and says everything which comes into his head, he does, of course, make a certain selection amongst his thoughts. It is true that he suppresses nothing intentionally, but, without meaning to, he finds that he is not saying everything. Sometimes it is only long afterwards that he realizes that he has omitted to give utterance to a thought which he had intended to tell us and which never came into his mind again. This is of no importance: in fact, it enables us to take stock of the resistances determined in the patient by certain associations of ideas.
An analysand who tries too hard to say everything that he is thinking ends by becoming a slave to this obligation and is no longer in a state of mind favourable to the unfolding of his thoughts, for he is preoccupied with the desire to catch on the wing every idea which comes into his mind. When our fundamental rule is applied in this way by the analysand, it cannot achieve the desir