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Lawrence Friedman has gifted us with an exciting new book, Freud’s Papers on Technique and Contemporary Clinical Practice. The book is primarily a collection of Friedman’s previously published papers, with the addition of a helpful introduction, three orienting prefaces, and a short end section. We have the privilege of following Friedman as he thinks through, with great rigour, depth, and insight, issues inherent to what Friedman sees as Freud's empirical discovery of the “strange” experience that is “the psychoanalytic experience … a novel state of unusual mental freedom” (1; all quotes in this review are from Friedman).
The papers—now chapters—are beautifully written in prose that is non-technical, clear, and suffused with wit. However, they are not always easy reading. They require concentration and thought, as Friedman takes us into a question, leading us as he thinks it through, always considering and evaluating different alternatives that would challenge or modify his main point. Friedman tends to begin with a thesis, based on an aspect of the analytic stance. He develops it, and then moves to questioning it, often based on post-Freudian challenges. He then challenges the challenges, and ends with a conclusion that reaffirms the initial thesis (and Freud's thinking). The papers are masterful contributions, one after the other.
Friedman's focus throughout is on how the analyst's “attitudes” (170) allow the psychoanalytic experience to unfold. He sees Freud's technical recommendations—abstinence, neutrality, and anonymity—as default positions for the analyst, “beacons” (142) within which he can establish and maintain the psychoanalytic phenomena that Freud discovered, and tolerate the necessary ambiguity and paradox that psychoanalysis demands. Friedman writes: “It bears repeating that most of those anti-analytic attitudes (the ‘don’t’s) that Freud's Papers on Technique cautions against are normal social attitudes. It is the task of training to make what is perfe