Problems of Psychoanalytic Technique

Comments on the Literature of Psychoanalytic Technique What we have wished to do in our discussions up to this point was not to contribute anything really new, but to annotate the technical rules set up by Freud and to show how the freudian theory of neuroses is applied in psychoanalytic therapy. We have discussed not the historical transformations of analytic technique but its principles as actually applied at present. Now that this discussion has been completed, some remarks about the historical development will certainly be of interest, as will be also the divergence of opinion among analysts upon certain points. With reference to the latter we believe that the need for lengthy polemics has been precluded by the presentation in previous chapters of conclusions arrived at not on the basis of controversy but rather by virtue of their cogency.

The psychoanalytic literature is very extensive. It is amazing how small a proportion of it is devoted to psychoanalytic technique and how much less to the theory of technique: an explanation of what the analyst does in psychoanalysis. This state of affairs is the result first of all of difficulties in presentation with which we too have had to contend in these discussions since in our wish to describe technique we had to presuppose a knowledge of the foundations of technique; it is the result, further, of external difficulties such as the consideration that patients in analysis might read the psychoanalytic literature. Nevertheless, the scarcity of papers on technique remains astonishing. To be sure, the absolute number of such papers is considerable, as shown in the appended bibliography; but this is a relatively small number