Back to Table of Contents
Although not mentioned as an entry in any regional contemporary psychoanalytic dictionaries of Latin America , contemporary psychoanalytic research on clinical utilization of Free Association by Laverde and Bayona (2012) finds, similar to North America, variable instructions which include not only thoughts, but emotions felt in the course of the session – as well as any difficulty the patient may have in communicating these. Consistent with this finding is the explicit acknowledgment that everything is important, from embarrassing contents to minute details. Some theoreticians emphasize the importance of communicating dreams and the emotions which accompany them. Considering that the fundamental rule was devised to evoke painful, repressed memories, it follows that the requirement of free association may provoke defenses and resistances that oppose to the very process of ‘freeing’ the unconscious contents thus defended against. Laverde’s and Bayona’s study consequently found that certain formulations of the fundamental rule may especially qualify as a super-ego-based imposition which generates rebelliousness in the patient. In many of his writings, Freud underscored that free association neither constitutes a purely associative act nor achieves complete freedom. Most contemporary scholars on all continents agree that demanding absolute compliance with the fundamental rule of free association is an impracticable aspiration, impossible to fulfil (Blackman, 2023) given the inherent complexities of the analytic process, which in turn revolves around the exploration of (the) Unconscious through the Conscious. Terminology From the start of the evolution of the concept, in Freud’s original German terms for free associative processes were “Assoziation’ (association) and/or ‘Einfall’ (occurrence). In “Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis”, presented at Clark University on North America soil, Freud (1910), using the German term “Freier Einfall” (an idea that occurs freely falls on the mind) rather than “Assoziation” highlights the non-linear nature of the free associative process as being “in the nature of allusions”, distorted by resistance. He draws an analogy to the relation between the manifest content of a dream and latent dream thoughts. In both cases the accuracy of the interpretation of what was warded off by the distortion needs to be confirmed by the surge of fresh ideas that emerge in the patient’s mind. Strachey's footnote clarifies that he avoids translating the German word Einfall as 'association' as much as possible, although when he has come across 'freier Einfall' he does translate it as 'free association', despite finding it objectionable. In fact, in Freud's texts where the word Einfall appears alone, Strachey usually translates it as 'occurrence' which (to him) seems to be more faithful to the German voice. Taking this into account, it should be noted that the criticisms of Strachey's translation of 'free association' may not be entirely justified. Firstly, because Strachey himself raises the difficulties of translating the word Einfall , especially when it is associated with freier . However, he already clarifies these difficulties in the mentioned footnote. Furthermore, he does
353
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online