You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Budapest, March 13, 19121
Dear Professor,
I know, of course, that in your recommendations2 only the most important ones about technique can find a place, but I think that you should also include a few lines about the following principles:
One ought not to get into any discussions with the patient. If one does that one forces him into a fighting position to which, for inner reasons, he is only too inclined; but if one omits them, then he will soon come forth by himself with confirmations. I customarily do not respond at all when contradicted, and if the patient wants to compel a response—then I tell him that further analysis will show whether I am right or not.3
Kind regards,
Ferenczi
Sealed postcard.
“Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psycho-Analysis” (Freud 1912).
Freud had taken the position that “it is never the aim of discussions like this to create conviction. They are only intended to bring the repressed complexes into consciousness, to set the conflict going in the field of conscious mental activity and to facilitate the emergence of fresh material from the unconscious” (“Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis” [1909]d, p. 181). Freud returned once again to this theme much later in “Constructions in Analysis” (1937d).