ABSTRACT
The fundamentals of psycho-analytic technique have undergone little essential alteration since the introduction of Freud’s ‘fundamental rule’ (free association). This chapter presents a case example to provide an insight into the play of forces at work in 'active technique'. Active therapy, regarded as a single entity, breaks up into the systematic issuing and carrying out of commands and of prohibitions. Indeed there is no kind of neurosis in which activity might not be employed. The chapter describes the employment of active therapy in a case of a man of bucolic appearance with complaints of attacks of loss of consciousness. The efficacy of activity becomes partly understandable perhaps from the ‘social’ aspect of analytic therapy. The fact that the expressions of emotion or motor actions forced from the patients evoke secondarily memories from the unconscious rests partly on the reciprocity of affect and idea emphasized by Freud.
