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If we evaluate the encompassing work which Dr. Theodor Reik has left for us as psychoanalysts, we must recognize that the most important part of this heritage is the obligation to carry on and extend his position in the problem of psychoanalytic technique. The particularity of Reik's method, commonly identified as “listening with the third ear,”6 derives from his own identification with one of Freud's “basic rules.” Classical psychoanalysis, making use of free association, has recently been characterized by Dr. Kurt Eissler as a most glorious invention, which can be compared with Galileo's telescope, as well as with van Leeuwenhoek's lenses.
Historically, Reik's technique is closely tied to the concept of free-floating attention. By the time of the Twelfth International Congress in1932, this concept had been extended by Reik to include the free associations of the analyst together with his intuitive interpretation. The method reaches the unconscious of both analyst and patient, thus creating a lyrical duet with unconscious chords and counterpoints. The important insight that emerges as a result of this interplay is a surprise to the analyst no less than to the patient. Further psychoanalytic explication of this technique and its application to many areas of human interest was given by Reik in his book The Search Within(1956),7 where he postulates that we are not able to comprehend all of what man knows or to know all of what he thinks. The heritage is too overwhelming to be accepted readily and too humanly significant to be rejected.
The contemporary psychoanalytic community, as next of kin, must ask how many of us have absorbed this profound insight and