Classics in Psychoanalytic Technique: Edited by Robert Langs,  Jason Aronson, New York, London, 1981,  523 pp.

Robert Langs has performed a valuable service for the student and teacher of psychoanalytic technique. His source book contains the largest number of classic papers on this subject available at this time. Many are required reading in courses on technique and some are not easily available outside of psychoanalytic libraries. Two earlier volumes, by Paul (1963) and by Bergman and Hartman (1976), have essayed this task, with high-quality selections and thoughtful commentaries, but neither has the historical scope nor the theoretical breadth of Langs' book. His is clearly the most ambitious and the most successful of the three.

Langs has collected 43 papers covering the years 1912 through 1980. The essays are arranged in six topical groups devoted to Transference, Nontransference, Noncountertransference (sic), The Therapeutic and Working Alliances, The Therapeutic Interaction, and the Therapeutic Setting and Hold. There are as few as three and as many as eight papers in each group, and most selections are truly classic contributions. Further, Langs provides a historical introduction to each section and editor's introductions to each of the papers that are consistently helpful and concise at the same time.

The 43 chapters are culled from “literally hundreds” of papers on technique. We can believe this claim since Langs (1976) has already published an excellent volume of abstracts of hundreds of papers, virtually the entire psychoanalytic literature on technique. Every reader will find some of his favorites missing but this must be accepted and respected since Langs' selections are for the most part very thoughtfully chosen.

There are, unfortunately, no papers devoted primarily to resistance, but in fairness one must acknowledge that issues of resistance are dealt with in many of the other papers. Much more regrettable is the omission of any papers devoted primarily to the problem of working through, and of papers concerned with the technique of termination.

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