On Freud's "On Beginning the Treatment"

"On beginning the treatment" (1913) is one of the most important of Freud's technical articles, a theme he examined between 1904 and 1918. This text, which sets out the basis of the treatment and the conditions of psychoanalysis, still provides a solid reference for the analytic practice. Far from a group of rigid rules, Freud spoke of the technique as an art, thinking always of the singularity of each case, even if the fundamental methods of free association and suspended attention specify the psychoanalytical method that differentiates it from the suggestion.

In this book, ten eminent analysts, coming from different schools of psychoanalytic thought, confront the contemporary technical proposals to the freudian precepts. The book reexamines, in the light of the latest advances in the analytic practice, such important questions as: the conditions of starting an analysis today; tranference and associativity; the play of the person of the analyst and intersubjectivity; the fundamental rule enunciation in contemporary practice; the conditions and functions of the interpretation; and the energetic drives in action during the treatment.

Contributors:
Alice Becker Lewkowicz, Hugo Bleichmar, Marie-France Dispaux, Antonino Ferro, Theodore Jacobs, Lewis A. Kirshner, Sergio Lewkowicz, Norberto Marucco, Patrick Miller, René Roussillon, Gennaro Saragnano, Christian Seulin, Rogelio Sosnik