New Ways in Psychoanalytic Technique

Although I have practised psycho-analysis for twenty years, this is the first time that I have made bold to address you on the subpect of psycho-analytic technique. I have been deterred from any earlier venture into publicity by two personal idiosyncrasies. In the first place, I have a very marked incapacity for learning from the mistakes of others. No aphorism, no advice, no warning is of any use: if I am to learn anything from other people's errors I must first of all commit them myself. Having made them my own I may then perhaps rid myself of them. And besides this obstinate lack of mental pliancy I have another peculiarity: I am almost incapable of learning from my own mistakes until I have repeated them several times. Only occasionally, when I have been clumsy in certain minor points of technique, have I been able to avoid my error the second time I recognized it.

Having thus prefaced my remarks, I will pass on to the discussion of certain fundamental problems of analytic technique. Let us direct our attention especially to its heuristic significance. The therapeutic use of analytic technique is a special case of analysis in this its wider aspect. Therefore I do not propose to discuss the psychotherapeutic application of the conclusions at which we shall arrive. This will form the subject of a later, separate discussion. I must acknowledge from the outset that the fundamental features of the technique described here claim a programmatic character. Some of them are new, while others are here formulated, or expressed in scientific terms, for the first time; all alike are derived from analytic practice and accordingly look to verification or criticism only from