The Dangers of Conflating Technique with Ethics: Commentary on Arnold Goldberg's “Some Limits of the Boundary Concept”

Joining Goldberg in challenging the utility of the boundary concept should be no problem for classically trained psychoanalysts who have found themselves adopting other-than-classical theoretical models as more compatible with both their therapeutic intentions and their comfort in analyzing patients. If you are an analyst who has struggled to transcend technical rules that restrain and restrict your spontaneity and authenticity, you are no stranger to more classical analysts' use of the boundary concept as part of an effort to combat the adoption of a less rigid approach to technique.

The emphasis on technique in classical ego psychology was— for those who ultimately developed a two-person orientation to psychoanalysis—an essential impetus for finding a more relaxed approach to technique, while simultaneously disavowing the role of technique in achieving therapeutic effectiveness. At the height of its dominance, ego psychology had so emphasized technique that those trained in it often felt a sense of guilt and shame over their failure to stick to its cardinal rules, including those of abstinence, neutrality, uninterrupted free association, and interpretation of transference as the bedrock of technical excellence. To deviate from such technique was seen as destroying the possibility of a true psychoanalytic cure.