Psycho-Analytic Technique1

The subject of this address is the technique of psycho-analysis. I do not think it necessary to give an extensive explanation of the choice of the subject. Not only for analysts, but also for physicians in general, for educationists, and for any person who in some way must ‘practise psychology’—as for instance parents must do with their children or children with their parents—it is important to know the principles on which psycho-analysis is based, and the methods which lead to the internal and external changes that this technique pursues. But even for the person who does not practise psychology actively in any sense (supposing that such a person exists), even for the one who only suffers passively the ‘practice of psychology’ by others, as the patient might at times consider himself, the subject is of interest. Anyone submitting to a surgical intervention will want to know what will be done to him and how this will be done. But in psycho-analysis such curiosity is still more legitimate and even indicated, for in reality it is not a merely passive experience; the analyst is not the only one who ‘operates’; the patient has to ‘co-operate’. And to this end it is useful for him to know what is the method and what is the aim of this ‘operation’.

Interest in a topic implies the wish to know its past, its present, and its future. Let us consider, first, the history of psycho-analytic technique. You probably know that during the nineteenth century, mental illnesses, neuroses, and other phenomena, which nowadays we understand as being psychological or psychogenic disorders, were then considered to be organic disorders, or more precisely, expressions of a ‘degeneration’ of the nervous system, the only cause of which was heredity. The depreciative tinge that the term ‘hereditary degeneration’ usually has for us, was also true for those times. Neuroses do not seem to have awakened the affection of physicians, but rather their distrust and rejection. Hysteria, for instance, was