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The active technique proposed by Ferenczi is not in itself a technique, or another technique that replaces the classical Freudian technique. It is an ‘auxiliary’ resource, or a ‘complement’ to the classical technique: even more so, when by means of the classical Freudian technique it is not possible to reach the contact and closeness necessary for the analytic relationship and especially for the more complex and traumatized patients with whom Ferenczi worked. In one of his earlier writings he reflected: "...my purpose was and still is to place the patients in a state in which they can follow the rule of free association with the help of certain artifices and thus succeed in provoking or accelerating the investigation of the unconscious psychic material. For the rest, these artifices are only necessary in exceptional cases. Most patients can develop their cure without ‘particular activity’ on the part of the physician or the patient, and when it is necessary to be more active, the intervention should be limited to what is strictly necessary. As soon as the stagnation of the analysis, which is the very justification and raison d'être of the modification in question, is overcome, the specialist will return as quickly as possible to the attitude of passive receptivity which creates for the physician's unconscious the most favorable conditions for effective collaboration." (1920, p.1) While Ferenczi notes that there is no type of neurosis to which active technique should not eventually be applied (1920, p.2), he also points out that it should not be used until all the resources offered by classical technique have been previously exhausted. "For the moment I can give only a negative formulation by saying that one cannot have recourse to activity unless one is in a position to affirm with some certainty that all the existing means of the non-activating, that is, more passive, technique have already been employed." (1926: p. 2). In this context, it is important to recognize Freud’s own modification of technique in the direction of increased activity of the analyst, especially with phobic and obsessional patients, predated both Ferenczi and Rank. Freud wrote of the need to actively encourage phobic patients to confront their fears (Freud 1910, 1919) and setting a termination date with those he deemed obsessive, first example of which was the termination date for the Wolfman, for July 1914 (Freud 1918). II. D. OTHER EARLY INTERNATIONALLY INFLUENTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS Hermann Nunberg (1932) refers to the usefulness of free association in linking the manifest content of dreams with the latent content, thus becoming fundamental material for the interpretation of dreams. In addition, he notes that free association can manifest itself as a resistance: the patient cannot stop his communication, he cannot enter into silence, either because he/she is afraid of silence, or to ‘control the analyst’, i.e., if the patient's communication ceases, the analyst lacks material to work with.
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