Reconsidering three aspects of psychoanalytic technique

In this paper three aspects of analytic technique are reconsidered from the perspective that analytic technique must serve the analytic process. The author views the analytic process as centrally involving the unconscious interplay of states of reverie of analyst and analysand, leading to the creation of a third subject of analysis. It is through the shared but asymmetrical experiencing of the 'analytic third' that analyst and analysand acquire a sense of, and generate symbols for, formerly unspoken and unthought aspects of the internal object world of the analysand. The state of reverie of the analytic pair requires conditions of privacy that must be safeguarded by analytic technique. From the perspective of the foregoing conception of the analytic process, the author attempts in the first part of this paper to reconsider the role of the couch in the analytic process. The second and third sections are devoted to a re-examination of aspects of analytic technique relating to the 'fundamental rule' of psychoanalysis and to the analysis of dreams.