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Almost 90 years have passed since the discovery of psychoanalysis as a treatment of mental illness. Yet the theory of psychoanalytic technique remains ambiguous and vulnerable. We are still searching for explanations of what characterizes the therapeutic role of the psychoanalyst. What are the components of the therapeutic intervention? How do we integrate an interactional, intersubjective, and intrapsychic point of view?
The commentaries in this issue on Gill's Analysis of Transference, Volume I and Gill and Hoffman's Analysis of Transference, Volume II (9 annotated audio-recorded sessions) focus directly on the fundamental technical principles of psychoanalysis. Because of the thoroughness and credibility of Gill's arguments, the reader is forced to review and reevaluate the usefulness of accepted clinical concepts and techniques. We share the reaction expressed in Sandler and Sandler's commentary: “…and even though many colleagues will to varying degrees have reservations about some of his propositions, we can expect that psychoanalytic theory of technique will never be the same again!”
Gill asserts that central to psychoanalysis is the analysis of the transference, defined as an inseparable component of all the interactions between analysand and analyst. This premise, in addition to a revised conception of resistance—resistance to the awareness of the transference and resistance of the resolution of the transference—presents a challenge to analysts of all schools of thought. What place should be assigned to extratransference interpretation and to genetic search and reconstruction? Does transference interpretation and the active pursuit of resistance to the awareness of transference receive insufficient attention in the technique of analysts in general?