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This is the third and final volume of Rank's “Technik der Psychoanalyse,” the first volume of which, Die Analytische Situation, appeared in 1926; the second, Die Analytische Reaktion, in 1929.
In the first book, Rank presented his conception of the analytic situation as the therapeutically important factor in analysis in contrast to the recall or reliving of past experience by the patient. According to this view, all material offered by the patient including dreams, whether its reference be to the past or the local environmental situation can be understood and therapeutically utilized only when its present meaning for the analytic situation is recognized and made the central point in treatment. Not the theoretical interpretations of the analyst, not the digging up of past causes and infantile fixations but the patient's realization, acceptance and active taking possession of his own present experience in analysis finally enable him to make connection with the denied or distorted past. The patient is fixated on the past, not because he loves it so much but because he fears the present. By going beyond content to the dynamic interplay of forces in the analytic situation, the analyst can give the patient an opportunity to live in the present, something he has never dared to do before.
The emphasis on the biological relation to the mother, rather than the later social relation to the father, as expressing the underlying meaning of the analytic situation for every patient, arose from Rank's experience in terminating analyses by setting a definite ending in advance. From the insight gained in this way, he came to the conclusion that for the patient, separation from the analysis is always a birth, which can be utilized constructively from the first day, not by presenting the birth trauma theory to the patient but by using this deepened understanding of the analytic relationship, to allow the patient to work through a gradual separation experience creatively instead of reacti