Vamik D. Volkan: Psychoanalytic Technique Expanded: A Textbook on Psychoanalytic Treatment

The author describes the differences between standard psychoanalysis and transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP) and reviews particular difficulties that psychodynamically trained clinicians have in learning TFP. In delineating differences between standard psychoanalysis and TFP, the author discusses mutual influences between standard psychoanalytic techniques and techniques of TFP. TFP is an extension and modification of standard psychoanalysis, but with quantitative modifications geared to the treatment of the most severe segment of personality disorders that tend not to be treatable by standard analysis. TFP includes some features that are directly facilitated by psychoanalytic education, such as the importance of free association and the organization of interpretations in terms of the analysis of defense, motivation, and impulse. On the other hand, TFP provides new strategies, enhancing standard psychoanalytic treatment, when it modifies technical neutrality under certain circumstances, allows for the analysis of “incompatible realities,” and accelerates interventions under conditions of severe acting out when technical neutrality is not possible to maintain. The author demonstrates the advantages of systematic training in TFP within psychoanalytic institutes as a true enrichment of technical training. He proposes that psychoanalysis as a profession consists of a broad spectrum of treatment approaches based upon the combined utilization of psychoanalytic techniques, with specific modifications to be organized in specific forms of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. TFP may be the closest modification to standard psychoanalysis proper and is clearly defined and manualized. This has permitted empirical research that has already demonstrated the effectiveness of TFP.

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Der erstaunliche methodologische Widerspruch zwischen Freuds Metapsychologie und seiner analytischen Technik

Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie ◽

10.1515/dzph-2017-0056 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 65 (5) ◽

Author(s):

Wolfgang Detel

Keyword(s):

Max Weber ◽

Natural Scientist ◽

Causal Explanations ◽

Psychoanalytic Technique ◽

Psychoanalytic Treatment ◽

Functional Methods ◽

Overwhelming Evidence ◽

Mental Disturbances ◽

Internal Rationality

AbstractFreud’s metapsychology has been interpreted in a number of different ways. Some scholars see him committed to classical scientism, others to genuine hermeneutics. Many Freud philologists suggest that he moved from an early scientism to hermeneutic methods in his later writings, and some think he misunderstood his own angle, thinking himself to be a natural scientist, but actually practising hermeneutics. The article first looks at Freud’s model of the soul and his remarks about psychoanalytic explanations and concludes that there is overwhelming evidence for the contention that he conceived of psychoanalytic explanations in terms of causal explanations and that his metapsychology is, all things considered, scientistic. However, it seems that Freud did not clearly distinguish between causal and rational explanations (i. e. genuine interpretations). The article emphasizes that he could have found this distinction in the writings of Max Weber. In the last two sections, the article turns to a meticulous analysis of two vignettes describing Freud’s own treatment of two cases that he takes to be fine examples of the technique used in psychoanalytic treatment. It turns out that Freud himself looks at these cases and their treatment, throughout, in terms of rationality and irrationality. In particular, he seems to distinguish between an “external” irrationality and an “internal” rationality of neurotic diseases. He also seems to point to functions of neuroses representing certain solutions for mental disturbances. Thus, there is much evidence for assuming that in his psychoanalytic technique, Freud relied on genuine hermeneutic and functional methods; and therefore, Freud’s official metapsychology seems to be methodologically inconsistent with his analytic technique.

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