Changes in the Theory and Practice of Psychoanalysis

In order to answer the challenge contained in this subject, I shall divide my exposition into the following parts: (1) Freud's references in relation to the future prospects of psychoanalysis and his way of conceiving of the mental activity of patient and analyst. Telephone and chess as models; (2) Semiotics as an auxiliary discipline to introduce new ways of theorizing on the psychoanalytic process; (3) The 'quasi colleague' patient as forming the bulk of patients nowadays. Some technical implications and a brief clinical example; (4) Technical considerations in reference to the analysis of overt psychotic patients and the relevance of the communicational aspect in the patient's family network.

In 'The Future Prospects of Psychoanalytic Therapy' Freud (1910) wrote that he had not come to the end of his resources as regards the neuroses and could soon hope for substantial improvement in the therapy. He wrote: 'This reinforcement will come, I think, from three directions: (1) from internal progress, (2) from increased authority, and (3) from the general effect of our work' (p. 141). In the same article he came to the conclusion that at that time, 1910, he considered the analyst's interventions in session as a decisive factor in the cure, and that both, patient and analyst, take active part in the treatment. In his 'Recommendations' on analytic technique Freud (1912) employed a metaphor which gains momentum if seen in the light of the spirit of the time. Considering the theory of communication, the psychoanalytic process turns the analyst into a peculiarly qualified decoder of the unconscious messages sent by the analysand in an inadvertent manner. In this paper he says:

He (the analyst) must turn his own unconscious like a receptive organ towards the transmitting unconscious of the patient. He must adjust himself to the patient as a telephone receiver is adjusted to the transmitting microphone. Just as the receiver converts back into sound waves the electr