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The recent reawakening of interest in the analyzing instrument has culminated in an entire issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychoanalysis (1992, Volume 1, Number 2), edited by H. M. Wyman and S. M. Rittenberg, devoted to Otto Isakower's original texts of 1957 and 1963 describing the concept, accompanied by an array of past and present reactions to his ideas. The analyzing instrument continues to be surrounded by controversy today, just as it was thirty years ago. It has not been sufficiently appreciated that this concept is derived from Freud's psychoanalytic method, something we work with daily, not from Freud's theories (Lothane, 1979, , , , ). Questions remain as to whether the analyzing instrument is a fundamental technique, a mainstay of psychoanalytic methodology, or whether it is merely one of its many tools, or, worse yet, merely an adjuvant.
Baiter and Spencer have introduced a new dimension to this debate by discussing the similarities and differences between the concept of