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FREE ASSOCIATION Tri-Regional Entry
Inter-Regional Editorial Board: Felipe Muller (Latin America), Jerome Blackman (North America), Antonio Pérez-Sánchez (Europe) Inter-Regional Coordinating Chair: Eva D. Papiasvili
I. INTRODUCTION AND INTRODUCTORY DEFINITION
So, say whatever goes through your mind. Act as though, for instance, you were a traveler sitting next to the window of a railway carriage and describing to someone inside the carriage the changing views which you see outside’ (Sigmund Freud, ‘On Beginning the Treatment”, 1913a)
Freud’s introduction of Free Association was a major technical advance because it provided the means by which the mind’s dynamic processes, the interplay of previously hidden motives and meanings, could be observed at work. It emerged during 1892 and 1898, in series of steps: from modified clinical hypnosis, through lucid concentration on a given idea, to emphasizing spontaneous verbal self-expression. As reported in “Studies on Hysteria” (1895), patients themselves were instrumental from the very beginning of this conceptual evolution. The method of free association was only gradually codified, as it was becoming more and more a keystone of psychoanalytic process and treatment. In line with the above, in contemporary North American Dictionaries , ‘Free Association’ is broadly defined as a form of mental activity characterized by the suspension of conscious control (censorship) over subjective experiences, encompassing anything that ‘comes to mind’ (e.g., ideas, feelings, body sensations, memories, dreams, etc.) (Auchincloss & Samberg 2012; Akhtar 2009). The word ‘free’ in ‘free associations’ implies that “there would be no predetermined point from which the session begins and no steering of the thought chain by the analyst” (Akhtar 2009, p. 115). When employed as a basic principle for structuring the psychoanalytic situation, free association becomes a ‘fundamental rule ’ (Freud 1913a, Auchincloss and Samberg 2012, Akhtar 2009) or, more in line with contemporary North American psychoanalytic terminology, a ‘fundamental condition’ (Lichtenberg and Galler 1987). The separate entry ‘Fundamental Rule’, Akhtar 2009) stresses that “putting inner experience into words turns internal reality into a shared external reality. This, in turn can be examined, deconstructed, and interpreted” (p. 117).
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