Horacio Etchegoyen - On Psychoanalytic Technique

On Psychoanalytic Technique

'The book written by R. Horacio Etchegoyen, The Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique (1991) Aperçu Karnac Books ed., New Ed, 2005, ISBN 1-85575-455-X], is undoubtedly a work of international standing, presented as it is in the form of a well-researched and well-written handbook which is easy both to read and to consult'.

In it Etchegoyen examines how 'psychoanalytic technique is influenced by the wide variety of theoretical points of view...throughout the world from Klein to Lacan...and he emphasises the advantages and disadvantages of the various approaches in the light of his own clinical experience'.

On the link between theory and practice, Etchegoyen wrote: "if you want to be rigorous in technique, sooner or later, you will run into the question of theory, because - as Freud stated - they are always coupled as a 'Junktim'" - one implies the other. Etchegoyen considered indeed that the 'permanent interaction of theory and technique is peculiar to psychoanalysis... inextricable union'.