ABSTRACT
One of the most passionately individual of psychoanalysts was Sandor Ferenczi. In his paper, "The Elasticity of Psychoanalytic Technique", Ferenczi introduced the idea of "tact" as an essential quality in the analyst's relation to the patient. All analysts would agree that it is important to understand things from the patient's point of view. This chapter emphasises not just that Ferenczi, like many people, believed in an obligation of care and concern from one human being to another. It points that an ethical principle like this, and not a metapsychological or theoretical belief, is what he takes as the starting point for his theory of clinical technique. Transference and its interpretation is an omnipresent theme in any analysis, and this chapter provides the clinical examples that illustrate how different locations on this dimension could give rise to different modes of addressing it. Independent clinical technique can be considered more as a way of listening than of interpreting.
