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II.
HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT
II. A. DIRECT AND INDIRECT PRE-ANALYTIC INFLUENCES Historically, the notion of a native human ability to make mental connections while thinking — i.e., cognizing, imagining, remembering, and experiencing emotion — arose from the monadic concept of “association of ideas”. Plato and Aristotle postulated that ideas are associated by similarity, contiguity, and contrast, especially with regard to the succession of memories. Ancient Greeks apparently practiced ‘therapy’ which included use of the couch, dream analysis, a version of free association, and the employment of rhetoric, dialectic, and catharsis (Laín-Entralgo 1970). For example, the play , “Clouds,” by Athenian playwright Aristophanes , involves a caricature of a consultation conducted by Socrates. Socrates asks Strepsiades to lie on a couch and let his thoughts ‘emerge in his mind . ’ Meanwhile, Socrates draws inferences from any inconsistencies. Further indirect influences include the meditative and interpretative techniques of Medieval Judaism of Abulafia and Zohar (Mahony 1979). Later, in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries , indirectly influential were British Empiricists John Locke, David Hume and Thomas Hartle y, who highlighted the importance of elements of empirical experience, in addition to, or over, rational thought as a principal source of knowledge about the world and oneself. Later elaboration of empiricism in the work of James Mill, and of his son , ‘radical empiricist’ John Stewart Mill, impacted19th century developments in the areas of linguistics , logic, and associatianist psychology. All of these influence d Freud’s thought in general, including his ideas regarding free association. Because of his multi-lingual classical liberal education and his involvement with the intellectual, cosmopolitan cultural life of Vienna, the ancient, medieval, and later philosophies of humanism, rationalism, enlightenment, romantism, and empirism were well known to Freud. He actively utilized some of them in his translational work: an example is his translation of John S. Mill from English to German, which involved a close encounter with the traditions of British empirical philosophy and associationist psychology, both based on Locke and Hume. The translation of Mill's essay on Plato also brought Freud into contact with the philosophical controversy of the time between the advocates of intuition, and the advocates of perception and reason. In addition to indirect influences from areas of liberal arts and philosophy, Freud’s scientific and medical studies exerted their indirect influence on his conceptualization of free association. Examples would be Hermann von Helmholtz’ physiology of perception, Gustav Fechner’s psychophysics, Johann Friedrich Herbart’s philosophical psychology, Freud’s own early work in the histology and physiology laboratories of Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke ( during his medical training ) , and training in neuropathology and biological psychiatry with Theodor Meynert (Thomä & Kächele 1988, Freud 1925, Freud, E. 1960, Anzieu 1986, Papiasvili 2015).
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