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Dr. Sterba briefly and clearly traces the course of Ferenczi's later developments in technique, paying full tribute to his admirable qualities, but shewing the extreme position which resulted from the effort to keep pace with the unsatisfactory outcome of each technical alteration.
These later developments included (a) the 'relaxation principle', resulting in increased and regressive emotional catharsis, (b) the principle of indulgence or concession (Gewährung) by which the analyst played the rôle of the 'tender mother' in a form of play-analysis in order to prevent renewed repression of the re-lived infantile situation, (c) 'neo-catharsis' by suggestion and encouragement to phantasy and removal of all confusion of speech (Sprachverwirrung) between grown-ups and children, (d) states of inaccessibility or 'trance', in which the patient attained a kind of 'clairvoyance' for the analyst's wishes, moods, etc., and enacted infantile situations and a variety of pathological conditions, the analyst taking part in such enactments in order not to disturb them, (e) abandonment by the analyst of his 'professional hypocrisy', by acknowledging any negative impulse or temporary indifference. Dr. Sterba shews that they were the outcome of the position of central importance accorded by Ferenczi to infantile traumata, which entailed an exclusive emphasis on environmental factors in causing the child to deviate from tender to sexual love.