The Meaning of Technique

Michael Fordham's paper ‘Technique and counter-transference’ (1969) seems to me to demand a closer and more comprehensive examination of the concept ‘technique’. This would avoid some confusion and throw a new light on his conclusions.

Fordham's statement at the outset of his paper that technique implies developing a clear picture of what analysts do (ibid., p. 95) might be considered confusing in view of facts which can be expressed in the form of an example: Einstein was concerned mainly with developing a clear picture of what scientists are doing, but nobody would call Einstein a technician, nor did Einstein use any technique in developing his theory of relativity.

The same confusion may arise from the following passage: ‘In the natural sciences technique has come to mean the skill of the scientist in using instruments of various kinds, whether mathematical or experimental. They are not subject to subjective or personal influence. Statistical techniques follow a logic of their own…. Can this concept be applied to interchanges between human beings at all and in particular between analyst and patient? That is to say, can there be a technique of analysis which has no relevance to the analyst as a person?’ (Ibid., p. 101 f.)

In this passage Fordham shifts from the definition of technique as ‘the skill in using instruments’ to an identification of technique with the instruments themselves, which are ‘not subject to subjective or personal influence’ and he bridges the gap by the term ‘statistical techniques’, whereas this is just an abbreviation of ‘techniques in the use of the instrument statistics’. Only ‘the skill of the scientist in using instruments’ corresponds to the generally accepted definition of technique as ‘manner of artistic execution, the part of artistic work that is reducible to formula, mechanical skill in art’ (Oxford Pocket Dictionary). One might wonder why such a misapprehension arises about technique and what it does. Obviously, Fordham broadens its