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Since candidates in analytic training often begin their study of technique with Freud's papers, collecting them into a volume and commenting on the ways in which they have been incorporated into contemporary analysis might have been very useful. Unfortunately, this is an uneven book, too sloppy and unreliable to be recommended to students despite some sensible consideration of contemporary views. Students seeking an introduction to Freud's ideas on technique should stick with Schafer (1983), the best discussion of the subject known to me.
Ellman begins with a chapter on Freud's early ideas and concludes with three others on Freud's actual conduct of treatment, the widening scope of psychoanalysis, and a summary of Freud's positions. The center of the book reprints the six papers which Freud published between 1911 and 1915—“The Employment of Dream-Interpretation in Psycho-Analysis,” “The Dynamics of the Transference,” “Recommendations for Physicians on the Psycho-Analytic Method of Treatment,” “On Beginning the Treatment,” “Recollection, Repetition and Working Through,” “Observations on Transference-Love”—as well as “Remarks upon the Theory and Practice of Dream-Interpretation” , sections 1, 2, and 8 of “Analysis Terminable and Interminable” , and “Constructions in Analysis” . Ellman groups the papers into four parts—transference, dream interpretation, clinical practice, and final views—and offers, in each part, introductions and contemporary perspectives, as well as marginal commentary on the papers themselves. Brenner, Kohut, and Gill receive the most attention, but a number of other contemporary analysts, including Bird on transference, Novick on termination, and Arlow on reconstruction, are discussed in detail. Ellman is at his best in these critical discussions. He is well acquainted with the writings of classical