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From the technical point of view among the most important characteristics of obsessive patients are the tendency to erotize their thoughts and words, their extreme ambivalence, their propensity to identify the analytic situation with a religious ritual, and to establish a sadomasochistic type of relationship with the analyst. These characteristics impose the necessity of not adopting—under the pretext of using the classical technical procedure—a ritualized type of technique
which would lead the way to a sadomasochistic relationship and, therefore, to an interminable analysis.
The tendency to isolate emotions and thoughts must be handled by offering the patient, in a discreet and neutral way, the possibility of establishing a type of relationship with the analyst which is not cold and rigid but rather is warm and real. To decrease the initial resistances, the analyst should familiarize the patient with the working of the unconscious on a general, impersonal level, in spite of the danger of intellectualization. Defenses should not be analyzed prematurely. The type of transference usually presented by the obsessive invites countertransference reactions; if these occur, discussion with the patient will go a long way toward establishing a human relationship devoid of stereotyped and unhealthy attitudes.