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Recently a colleague1 quipped: “Nowadays being neutral means remaining equidistant between Owen Renik and Fred Busch.” If you're reading Fred Pine's Diversity and Direction in Psychoanalytic Technique, you may add Brenner, Kohut, and Kernberg to the list.
“Diversity in Technique” and “Diversity in Theory” (the titles of the first two chapters) are inherent in our field and in the highly individualized nature of each analyst, of each patient, and, therefore, of each analysis. It is from this highly individual standpoint, from a “personal statement,” that Pine speaks to us. He brings us back to the simple but, perhaps, not often recognized idea that the reason we have a diversity of theory and technique is that our patients bring to us problems from all spheres of their psychology: drive, ego, self, and object relations. There is, therefore, a potential to do a disservice to the patient if one theory is used exclusively: “When the mind is viewed single-mindedly…failures to understand become a real danger” (p. 127).
The chapter on therapeutic action, with a focus on the interaction between interpretation and the relationship, offers a useful review of the contributions of Loewald and Gill. This leads to a careful discussion of the contemporary issue of self-disclosure and the important task of “distinguishing between work that is for the psychoanalyst and work that is for the patient.” Pine's clarity of writing is exemplified as he describes one way of dealing with countertransference: “Something is happening between us here and I think I have been caught up in it and detect it in my way of working; if I can process it and put it into words we will learn something about you” (p. 77).
This serves as a preparation for the next chapter, “A Contribution to the Analysis of the Psychoanalytic Process.” Taking again an historical perspective and starting with Strachey, Pine focuses on the specifics of