Changes in Psychoanalytic Technique, Progressive or Retrogressive

In this paper I will consider psychoanalytic technique in new and old dress, and a remarkable congruence in the technical writings of Sandor Ferenczi with those present-day revisionists of what we call standard technique. The title of the paper, “Changes in Psychoanalytic Technique, Progressive or Retrogressive,” is adapted from a paper by Ferenczi delivered in 1929 as “Progress in Technique” and published in 1930 as “The Principle of Relaxation and Neocatharsis” (Ferenczi, 1930). Perhaps, Ferenczi said, the term progress is a misnomer; perhaps the tide should be “retrogressive or reactionary.” But, as he said, backward can be forward. Ferenczi advocated a return to Freud's early theory when the pathogenesis of neurosis was thought to be the traumatic impact on the child of seduction by the adult, and the remedy was recovery of memory, catharsis, and the use of the personality of the analyst to influence the patient. On this position, “unjustly neglected” (Ferenczi, 1933, p. 156), Ferenczi constructed an alteration of the early technique with emphasis, enhancement, and expansion of the role of the analyst that would bring about not only a reliving of the trauma but in addition, a corrective experience, and thus a “neocatharsis” that would heal in a way that other techniques had failed to do.

Ferenczi's new technique of 1930 was also a significant alteration of what was at that time already very close to the standard technique of today. The role of transference had by 1930 almost reached its current preeminence (Strachey, 1934), and a greater understanding