Response

Dear Sir,

In my review of Lohser and Newton's Unorthodox Freud, perhaps I should have noted that the authors, at certain points, assert that Freud's papers on technique have been significantly misconstrued, and that in fact these papers advocate an analytic stance quite consonant with the more natural way that Freud seemed to work with his patients. The case for this assertion is mostly contained in an exceedingly scant (thirteen pages in all) and unconvincing chapter on the papers on technique. Lohser and Newton's contention is based on some opening remarks Freud made in these papers, a few re-translations (most of them recounted in their letter), no historical context, no sustained critical inquiry into the papers on technique, and some strong-armed interpretations that ignore a great deal of ambiguity (i.e. they make much of the difference between translating ‘Ratschläge’ as ‘advice’ versus ‘recommendations’ and emphasize a 1925 usage of the term ‘Takt’ by Freud that is contradicted by his usage of the same term in 1910). In the end, even if we were to simply grant the authors all of their re-interpretations without regard, many of the most important images and terms from the papers on technique—the analyst as mirror, the analyst as surgeon who operates with emotional coldness, the notion of ‘Indifferenz’, and the role of transference interpretation—remain completely unaltered. Contrary to their extreme claims in their letter to the Editor, the authors themselves concede this much more ambiguous state of affairs in their book by concluding that Freud in his technical advice oscillated between a position characterized by ‘flexibility, tact and individual preference’ and ‘absolute and authoritarian directives’ regarding ‘free association, analysis of transference, abstinence, neutrality and the uncovering and overcoming of resistance’ (p. 23). That is quite a bit to characterize as ‘absolute and authoritarian’ while simultaneously asserting that Freud's technic