Perverse Transference and Psychoanalytic Technique: An Introduction to the Work of Horacio Etchegoyen

Books on psychoanalytic technique in English have been limited to a single point of view. For example, Glover (1955) explicates Kleinian technique, Fenichel (1941) structural-ego-psychological. Greenson (1967) is more object relational, while Bergmann and Hartman (1976) include essays by analysts of varied persuasions, but view the history of technique as a kind of ladder constantly approaching the heights of ego psychology. Etchegoyen's Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique includes not only historical sources, but also current developments in these schools as well as the Lacanian and French non-Lacanians, Bionians, and others. He lays out their different points of view for comparison. Early in the book he sets out the problems that he is going to deal with. The problems are:

1. When, with whom, and how to start an analysis;

2. Problems in countertransference;

3. Interpretations and constructions;

4. Process of an analysis;

5. The beginning, midstage, and termination stages;

6. Analytic impasses, negative therapeutic reaction, and acting out.

Fond of paradox, and very playful in his thinking, Etchegoyen offers a salty commentary on the widely debated issue of whether the