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The recognition of considerable variations in technique amongst members of the British Psycho-Analytical Society is a good reason for studying again the historical development of technical procedure with the purpose of reviewing the relationship between differing techniques.
It appears that some variations in technique depend partly on a difference in the emphasis placed on the relative importance of changes wihch take place in the mind during the course of the treatment, and partly on differences of opinion on the time in the treatment at which particular resistances should be dealt with.
In this communication I shall make a brief and in no way comprehensive survey of developments in technical procedure with comments on problems which arise in connection with the relation of theory to technique. The last section of the paper will be devoted to the aim of the therapy and a discussion on the changes which take place in the mind during a successful treatment.
The development of the theory of technique and the theory of therapy has gone hand in hand with the increase in knowledge gained as the result of clinical experience and the formulation of a metapsychology appropriate to the observations made in the consulting room.
Freud's abandonment of the technique of hypnosis for that of analysis was the essential step which initiated a scientific approach to psycho-therapy. The relationship between hypnotist and patient was explained later when the dynamics of psychical relationships were understood and expressed in psycho-analytical terms. The hypnotic state is now regarded as a revival of a repressed relationship between child and parent in which the repressed parent imago is projected on to the operator. In order that this may take place, parts of the ego of the patient are rendered temporarily functionless, by withdrawal of cathexes. According to Rado (1925) the therapeutic result depends on the fact that a release of unconscious libidinal tension is experienced by the