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THE STUDY of the place of regression in analytic work is one of the tasks Freud left us to carry out, and I think it is a subject for which this Society is ready. I base this idea on the fact that material relevant to the subject occurs frequently in papers read before the Society. Usually attention is not specifically drawn to this aspect of our work, or else it is referred to casually under the guise of the intuitive or ‘art’ aspect of psycho-analytic practice.
The subject of regression is one that has been forced on my attention by certain cases during the past dozen years of my clinical work. It is, of course, too vast for full presentation here and now. I shall choose therefore those aspects that seem to me to introduce the discussion in a fruitful way.
Analysis is not only a technical exercise. It is something that we become able to do when we have reached a stage in acquiring a basic technique. What we become able to do enables us to co-operate with the patient in following the process, that which in each patient has its own pace and which follows its own course; all the important features of this process derive from the patient and not from ourselves as analysts.
Let us therefore clearly keep before our minds the difference between technique and the carrying through of a treatment. It is possible to carry through a treatment with limited technique, and it is possible with highly developed technique to fail to carry through a treatment.
Let us also bear in mind that by the legitimate method of careful choice of case we may and usually do avoid meeting aspects of human nature that must take us beyond our technical equipment.
Choice of case implies classification. For my present purpose I group cases according to the technical equipment they require of the analyst. I divide