Therapy and Technique

"It is not easy to play upon the instrument of the soul."
Uncovering a neurotic's most intimate, fiercely guarded secrets is a vital, and immensely difficult, task of psychoanalysis. Freud, early in his career, used hypnosis to penetrate the minds of his patients; eventually he discovered the famous, more effective techniques of "dream interpretation" and "free association." In this volume he describes three methods and all the details of analytic treatment, from the position of the patient on the much-joked-about couch to the proper moral attitude of the doctor, who "must also have overcome in his own mind that mixture of lewdness and prudery with which, unfortunately, so many people habitually consider sexual problems." The terms which have come to have special "Freudian" meanings - such as complex, repression, resistance, transference, and unconscious - are carefully explained. And, as is Freud's custom, every essay is enriched with examples from his personal research, the dreams and activities of his patients, and events in his own life.