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The great extension of our subject demands a strict selection among the multiple aspects it includes. I shall therefore confine myself to the points which I believe deserve our greatest interest. For instance, as to the various present trends in psycho-analytic technique, I shall refer especially to two: ‘the more specifically Freudian’ trend and the ‘trend of the British School’ (Waelder, 1945). Furthermore, I shall point out some important ideas of those who are to be found between those two trends, and shall add some personal points of view. On the other hand, I will have to leave aside the technical ideas of the ‘culturalists’ (Horney, Fromm-Reichman, and others), and those of Alexander and others, although they contain many points of interest.
‘Making conscious the unconscious’, or ‘overcoming the resistances’ has been and continues to be the way and the aim of all psycho-analytic technique. The formulations of this principle vary, as well as its contents and the methods of application, but the principle has remained the same. Freud also formulates the aim of analysis, for instance, as the ‘restoration of mental unity, putting an end to the alienation between ego and libido’ (1917), or, in terms of structure, ‘Where id was there ego shall be’ (1933). All these formulations essentially express the same thing, and this principle also is the basis on which analysts of yesterday and today agree. Only one of Freud's formulations is doubted up to a point, by some analysts. I am referring to ‘filling in the gaps in memory’, a term which for Freud is equivalent to ‘making conscious the unconscious’. Doubt arises in those for whom childhood memories and repetitions in the transference are prevailingly opposite phenomena, and who at the same time consider the transference re-experience as the decisive field in which to make