ABSTRACT
The “Golden Age” of psychoanalysis lasted through the 50s. The theory of therapeutic action during this long and fruitful era, initiated by the beginning discoveries, but adding flesh to the initial concept with each passing decade, followed the 1954 formula of Edward Bibring. Psychoanalysis worked by the “curative principle” of insight brought about by the “technical maneuver” of interpretation. A major ideational and demographic change in the status of the science and discipline of psychoanalysis took place in 1969–1970, coinciding with the Rome Congress and before the next one held in Vienna. Most patients seeking “treatment” are in the group appropriate to various forms of analytic therapy short of official psychoanalysis as a treatment modality. The psychoanalyst who undertakes the treatment and exploration of those relatively few who seek and undergo psychoanalysis for professional or intellectual or other reasons needs to orient himself to the special task.
