hinder psychological adaptation. Psychoanalysis, so far as our present knowledge of it goes, thus appears to be simply a rational nerve-therapy.
For the technical application of psychoanalysis no programme can be formulated. There are only general principles, and, for the individual case, working rules. (Here let me refer you to Freud's work in volume I. of the Internationale Zeitschrift fur Ärztliche Psychoanalyse.) My one working rule is to conduct the analysis as a perfectly ordinary, sensible conversation, and to avoid all appearance of medical magic.
The leading principle of the psychoanalytic technique is to analyse the psychic material which offers itself then and there. Every interference on the part of the analyst, with the object of inducing the analysis to follow some systematic course, is a gross mistake in technique. So-called chance is the law and the order of psychoanalysis.
Naturally in the beginning of the analysis the anamnesis and the diagnosis come first. The subsequent analytic process develops quite differently in every case. To give rules is well-nigh impossible. All one can say is that very frequently, quite at the beginning, a series of resistances have to be overcome, resistances against both method and man. Patients having no idea of psychoanalysis must first be given some understanding of the method. In those who already know something of it, there are very often many misconceptions to set right, and frequently one has to deal also with many reproaches cast by scientific criticism. In either case the misconceptions rest upon arbitrary interpretations, superficiality, or complete ignorance of the facts.
If the patient is himself a doctor his special knowledge may prove extremely tiresome. To intelligent colleagues it is best to give a complete theoretic exposition. With foolish and limited persons you begin quietly with analysis. In the unconscious of such folk there is a confederate that never refuses help. From the analysis of the very earliest dreams the emptiness of the criticism is obvious; and ultimately of the whole beautiful edifice of supposedly scientific scepticism
