Further Contributions to the Theory and Technique of Psychoanalysis

FURTHER CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE THEORY AND TECHNIQUE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS by SANDOR FERENCZI. Originally published in 1927. AUTHORS PREFACE: THE courtesy of the Institute of Psycho-Analysis enables me to publish a second collection of my psycho-analytical writings in English the first appeared in 1916 in the splendid translation of my honoured friend. Dr. Ernest Jones, under the title, Contributions to Psycho-Analysis Boston Badger and Co., reappearing in several new editions under the title Sex and Psycho analysis, The present collection in no way gives a systematic survey of the development of psycho-analysis in the inter vening years, but only the disjointed papers which represent the authors personal contribution to this development. Even in their diversity of form, perhaps in their very medley, I believe these papers give a true picture of the manifold interests which continually occupy the physician practising psycho-analysis, and which bring him into touch with the most varied fields of the natural and mental sciences. The personal inclinations of the author inevitably find expression the outlook is predominantly that of the medical rather than that of the abstract sciences, and there gradually emerges a sort of psycho-analytical theory of one of the important manifestations of instinct Genitality . The theories of genitality have been collected under the title, An Attempt to formulate a Genital Theory which appeared in German in 1924 an English translation will shortly be published. The experiences collected in the course of my practice of psycho-analysis become grouped under two heads. One of these tends to shed some analytical light derived from experience upon certain normal and pathological psychic phenomena which have not been fully explained previously, and attempts to explain the symptoms of hysteria., tic, etc. A somewhat larger work falling under this heading has already appeared in English in the c Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series as the theoretical part of an analytic research into General Paralysis of the Insane. The other focus of interest in my work lies in the field of technique my attempt to speed up the analytic technique by so-called active measures belongs to this category. I mention this particularly, because an erroneous opinion repeatedly crops up that the classical Freudian technique was to be replaced by something new in my Active Technique. It will not escape the attentive reader that there can be no question of that, and that my technical innovations should only be applied occasionally as adjuvants in reinforcing the Freudian method. Inasmuch as I have overworked this measure occasionally, following one of Ranks suggestions the setting of a limit to the duration of the analysis, I must on empirical grounds reduce its value to its legitimate measure see Contra indications of the Active Technique For the rest I hold fast to the critical views expressed in the brochure on the Development of the Psycho-Analytic Technique Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series on certain deficiencies in the application of the conventional method, but I take exception to the one-sidedness of the Birth-Theory of the neuroses and the much-overdone Birth-Technique, It gives me great pleasure to lay my work once more before Anglo-Saxon readers, particularly because I have found that with their broad-mindedness they often strive to view such opinions as mine quite without prejudice, whereas elsewhere these are turned down a timine on account of their novelty or their boldness. I owe many thanks to the translator of most of this work Dr...