"The technical rules which I am putting forward here have been arrived at from my own experience in the course of many years, after unfortunate results had led me to abandon other methods" (1912e, 111). Thus began Sigmund Freud's "Recommendations to Physicians," which is, together with "The Handling of Dream Interpretation in Psychoanalysis" (1911e) and "The Dynamics of Transference" (1912b), among the rare technical essays that resulted from Freud's 1908 attempt to write a "general methodology," a project he abandoned in 1910.

Freud went on to specify that these recommendations were the result of his own methods and that it was possible that another physician would assume a different position. But he insisted on their common goal, which was to establish for the analyst conditions that paralleled the "fundamental rule" imposed on the patient. It was in line with this that he recommended an attitude of "evenly suspended attention,"...