Abstinence (psychoanalysis)

As Sigmund Freud wrote in 1914:

The cure must be carried through in abstinence. I mean by that not physical self-denial alone, nor the denial of every desire....But I want to state the principle that one must permit neediness and yearning to remain as forces favoring work and change.

Later formulations

The validity of the abstinence principle has been rediscovered and reaffirmed in a variety of subsequent analytic traditions.

• Jacques Lacan re-formulated the principle via the concept of 'analytic bridge' –the analyst necessarily playing the part of the unresponding dummy to bring the patient's unconscious motivations out into the open.
• Eric Berne saw analytic frustration as a means of avoiding playing a part in the patient's life script.
• R. D. Laing, in the context of the false self, saw analytic abstinence operating in opposition to false self collusion: "It is in terms of basic frustration of the self's search for a collusive complement for false identity that Freud's dictum that analysis should be conducted under conditions of maximal frustration takes on its most cogent meaning".
• D. W. Winnicott in the context of his notion of 'holding' the patient emphasised that understanding through verbal interpretation gave a deeper sense of holding than the physical act, use of which by the therapist could blur the symbolic nature of the analytic space.