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not always translate Einfall by association. This is why, in the quotations from Strachey's English translation provided here, the German word 'Einfall' is sometimes added in brackets alongside the English 'occurrence.' Among critics of Strachey’s translation was Charles Rycroft (1968), who in his “Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis” considered Strachey’s translating Freud’s freier Einfall , as free association to be a ‘mistranslation’, because Einfall really means ‘irruption’ or ‘sudden idea’, rather than “association”, and the concept refers “to ideas which occur to one spontaneously, without straining” (1968, p. 59). Nevertheless, for other authors such as Auchincloss, E. L. and Samberg, E. (2012), the term “free association” is justified as it “derives from the theoretical principle of psychic determinism: all mental events are caused by antecedent mental events and that there is an unconscious connection or “association” between two or more mental elements”, and the analyst can make inferences about the unconscious associative links that underlie and partially determine the patient's ongoing conscious, subjective experience” (ibid, pp. 89). To add more complexity to the translation of terminology, Thomä and Kachele (1987), the two German authors, point out: “Strictly speaking, there are significant differences in meaning between the two German words Einfall and Assoziation, which are both customarily rendered as “association” in English and are indeed often used synonymously in German. A good Einfall (spontaneously occurring idea) has a creative quality about it, whereas the word Assoziation stresses a connection. At least for subjective experience, an Einfall is the spontaneous expression of thought processes which lead to a new configuration. The patient's Assoziationen, however, are assembled by the analyst into a meaningful whole. An Einfall has an integrating function that comes close to insight" (Thoma and Kachele, 1987, p:222). Based on the above, it may be no accident that Freud kept both words. In fact, one encounters here another of Freud's ambiguous formulations wherein apparently opposing meanings coexist. In this instance, 'spontaneous occurrence', which is apparently detached from everything; and 'association-connection' which links this occurrence, are both part of the conceptual formulation. It follows that the fundamental rule cannot be understood without either of the two characteristics, as free association addresses unconscious phenomena through the realm of consciousness.
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