The Blackboard as an Analytic Accessory

My acceptance of Freud's theory of mind came slowly. I now know that over a period of nearly two decades I was unconsciously resisting its implications and that facts which seemed to support alternative theories were to me what a favorable new witness is to an attorney for the defense. This was apparent in most of my publications and was pointed out by various critics, hence the present report of an experiment in analytic technique is likely to be regarded as reflecting a continuation of the old resistance unless its purpose is clearly understood in advance. To put it briefly, since July, 1928, I have been steadily occupied with experiments in analytic method which have been aimed at overcoming some of the difficulties which stand in the way of proceeding with certain types of patients in accordance with the technical principles laid down by Freud. These principles have been validated by years of therapeutic work on his part and that of his students, but essential adherence to them is not easy unless one can be fairly selective in accepting cases for analysis.

When some experience as an analysand in 1925 made it emotionally possible for me to begin what has become a final shift from psychiatric behaviorism to psychoanalysis the corresponding shift in therapeutic method confronted me with problems which doubtless enter into the experience of every analyst who cannot wholly escape the obligations of a general psychiatric practice. The first of these difficulties grew out of the circumstance that good technique requires the analyst to limit his own verbal interferences to the minimum essential to reasonable progress with the patient. Exclusively analytic clinicians may not realize how seriously this difficulty handicaps their more broadly functioning colleagues. The economic value of habit holds in general psychiatric work as it does in all other vocations, and the habits we develop in dealing with nonanalytic cases tend to make poor analysts of us. In these cases we mu