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The Elasticity of Psychoanalytic Technique PDF
The Elasticity of Psychoanalytic Technique PDF
TECHNIQUE 1
(1928)
Society, 1927
deal about his fellows which was previously beyond the range
1
German original in Int. Z-f- ? * sa
( 9 8)
! 2
4> 91> First English trans
1 l
lation.
2
Reprinted in Collected Papers, Vol. I I .
87
88 FINAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO PSYCHO-ANALYSIS VIII
analyst must wait patiently until the patient makes up his own
mind; any impatience on the physician's part costs the patient
time and money and the physician a great deal of work which
he could very well spare.
A patient of mine once spoke of the 'elasticity of analytic tech
nique', a phrase which I fully accept. T h e analyst, like an
elastic band, must yield to the patient's pull, but without ceas
ing to pull in his own direction, so long as one position or the
other has not been conclusively demonstrated to be unten
able.
One must never be ashamed unreservedly to confess one's
own mistakes. I t must never be forgotten that analysis is no
suggestive process, primarily dependent on the physician's repu
tation and infallibility. A l l that it calls for is confidence in the
physician's frankness and honesty, which does not suffer from
the frank confession of mistakes.
Analysis demands of the physician, not only a firm control of
his own narcissism, but also a sharp watch on his emotional
reactions of every kind. I t used to be held that an excessive
degree of'antipathy' was an indication against undertaking an
analysis, but deeper insight into the relationship has caused us
to regard such a thing as unacceptable in principle, and to
expect the analysed analyst's self-knowledge and self-control to
be too strong for him to yield to such idiosyncrasies. Such 'anti
pathetic features' are in most cases only fore-structures, behind
which quite different characteristics are concealed; dropping
the patient in such cases would be merely leaving him in the
lurch, because the unconscious aim of intolerable behaviour is
often to be sent away. Knowledge of these things gives us the
advantage of being able coolly to regard even the most un
pleasant and repulsive person as a patient in need of help, and
even enables us not to withhold our sympathy from him. T h e
acquisition of this more than Christian humility is one of the
hardest tasks of psycho-analytic practice, and striving to achieve
it may incidentally lead us into the most terrible traps. I must
once more emphasize that here too only real empathy helps;
the patient's sharp wits will easily detect any pose.
One gradually becomes aware how immensely complicated
96 FINAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO PSYCHO-ANALYSIS VIII
the mental work demanded from the analyst is. He has to let
the patient's free associations play upon him; simultaneously he
lets his own fantasy get to work with the association material;
from time to time he compares the new connexions that arise
with earlier results of the analysis; and not for one moment must
he relax the vigilance and criticism made necessary by his own
subjective trends.
One might say that his mind swings continuously between
empathy, self-observation, and making judgements. T h e latter
emerge spontaneously from time to time as mental signals,
which at first, of course, have to be assessed only as such; only
after the accumulation of further evidence is one entitled to
make an interpretation.
Above all, one must be sparing with interpretations, for one
of the most important rules of analysis is to do no unnecessary
talking; over-keenness in making interpretations is one of the
infantile diseases of the analyst. When the patient's resistance
has been analytically resolved, stages in the analysis are reached
every now and then in which the patient does the w6rk of inter
pretation practically unaided, or with only slight prompting
from the analyst.
A n d now let us return for a moment to the subject of my
much-praised and much-blamed 'activity'. I believe I am at
1
1
By metapsychology we mean, of course, the sum-total of the ideas about
the structure and dynamics of the psychical apparatus which our psycho
analytic experiences have caused us to adopt. See Freud's papers on meta
psychology in his Collected Papers, Vol. IV.
I928 THE ELASTICITY OF PSYCHO-ANALYTIC TECHNIQUE 99