Active Therapy in Psychoanalysis*

There has recently been developed a new departure in psychoanalytic technique, the importance of which cannot be finally and definitely estimated at present because this new form of technique is only in its beginning. Further clinical experience in psychoanalytic therapy will be necessary before the utility and perhaps the limitations of this new technique can be completely evaluated. As a contribution to further study of medical psychoanalysis, this communication is presented in the hope that more definite factors may be formulated. This technique consists of what Ferenczi terms “active therapy”1 but Ferenczi himself has been careful to point out that the older catharsis and the more recent free associations were in themselves pronouncedly active, the really new contribution consisting of active interference on the part of the physician at a certain stage in the analysis. It is the ability to distinguish this stage in the analysis, the proper time for interference and the exact method of active interference to be utilized, which constitutes this new phase of analytic therapeutics.

According to Ferenczi's contribution before the International Psychoanalytical Congress, in active therapy, particularly in hysterical phobias, the patients were urged to reexperience the situation producing the phobia and anxiety and this resulted in advancing the analysis. The chief rule of this modified therapy was that the treatment has to be carried through in abstinence and in many cases the procedure used was in the form of orders and prohibitions, always