Returning to freud.

Abstract

In this article I attempt to renew interest in the importance of Freud's work for both the practice of psychoanalysis and in the training of psychoanalysts. I hope to stimulate readers to return to Freud's writings in detail, which seem to be increasingly neglected these days both in training and in the many conflicting contemporary models of psychoanalysis. I propose that the identity of psychoanalysis can still be based on Freud's work, and his approach can form a fundamental center from which there are various channels of divergence that may be useful when the patient seems to need them. But the centerpiece of our training and our orientation, I suggest, should be the basic principles spelled out in Freud's numerous volumes, in spite of the many changes and contradictions and even outright mistakes and cultural blindness he displays in some instances. I proceed to review some of these basic principles in the hope of persuading the reader to return to Freud again. I present these with some commentary from my own 50 years of clinical experience. I briefly review the clinical cornerstones of Freud's approach as developed in his early books, his controversial papers on technique, and his later emendations, which constitute the actual reality of Freud at work in psychoanalysis (that sometimes--and sometimes wisely--violates his papers on technique), and I discuss his notion of curative factors in psychoanalysis. All of this is to revive an interest in Freud's thought and to emphasize the lasting value of his work, both in its contemporary clinical relevance and as the proposed foundation stone of our identity as psychoanalysts.