Playing with Techniques—Trios and Duets: Commentary on Paper by Lewis Aron

FREUD METAPHORIZED ANALYTIC TECHNIQUE AS AN INSTRUMENT—THE surgeon's scalpel. I regard the analytic instrument more as a cello. In his thoughtful article, Aron asks how—in this postmodern age of theoretical pluralism and “irreducible subjectivity”—do we play our instrument and how do we teach others a sound technique? Let us consider these questions as a matter of musicality.

A case in point. Because our eight-year-old granddaughter, Lindsey, was studying the cello, and because Yo-Yo Ma was her hero, my wife and I wrote a letter to Mr. Ma. We asked him whether, as a neighbor and fellow Harvard alumnus, he would consider our request to offer Lindsey a cello lesson when she came east from Vancouver for the Christmas holidays—at whatever fee he charged. Mr. Ma's secretary phoned us to say he would happily receive Lindsey and her cello but that he would accept no fee because, “when he was a young learner, others were similarly kind to him.” Ma loves music, he loves children, and he loves to teach.

So, when Lindsey arrived in mid-December, she and her father walked to Ma's house at the prearranged hour. Ma greeted Lindsey with his broad smile and asked what she was studying. Her father produced her music, a simple folk tune, and Ma ran upstairs for his cello. He spent the hour joining Lindsey in playing her music. Lindsey came home beaming. She described with particular delight one pointer that Ma had offered her: he said that he knew a way that the bow could play both the first and last cello strings at the same time, a feat considered impossible because of the curvature of the bridge. Although