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The author's lectures to the French Institute of Psychoanalysis are collected in this book. Special emphasis is placed upon the more technical problems of psychoanalytic treatment. Starting with the approach of the patient in the beginning of analysis, the author proceeds with an outline of the treatment by illustrating it with well chosen, instructive and detailed case histories, and ends with a description of technical details as to the proper time to finish treatment, and the like. The fundamental rule, the transformation in the patient, the problem of active psychoanalytic technique are discussed and an evaluation of their therapeutic effectiveness is attempted. Some chapters are devoted to the clinical aspects of special kinds of neuroses, such as frigidity in women, the 'carmelite' neurosis, the failure neurosis, and the family neurosis.
Attempts like this to develop and clarify the problems of psychoanalytic technique for the reader suffer always from the fact that medicine in general, and psychoanalysis especially, can not be learned from books. Psychoanalytic technique must be learned in supervised analysis, may be deepened in the personal communication of seminar discussions, and may only later find confirmation in books about technical questions. But such books are not written to be read by the beginner and therefore they should not be simplified as are many chapters in Laforgue's book; for instance the chapter on Positive and Negative Complexes.