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[the analyst] “rejects the use of any special expedient (even that of taking notes).” And “not directing one's notice to anything in particular and in maintaining the same ‘ evenly- suspended attention’ (as I have called it) in the face of all that one hears.” (1912a, pp.111-112; Italics added). To clarify further, Freud adds: “The rule for the doctor may be expressed: ‘He should withhold all conscious influences from his capacity to attend, and give himself over completely to his “unconscious memory”.’ Or, to put it purely in terms of technique: ‘He should simply listen, and not bother about whether he is keeping anything in mind.’ (1912a, p.112) A few pages later, Freud summarizes the analyst’s inner experience as a guide to the understanding of the patient’s unconscious, in his notable ‘telephone metaphor’, once again annunciating the analyst’s position as complementary to the patient’s free association: “Just as the patient must relate everything that his self-observation can detect, and keep back all the logical and affective objections that seek to induce him to make a selection from among them, so the doctor must put himself in a position to make use of everything he is told for the purposes of interpretation and of recognizing the concealed unconscious material without substituting a censorship of his own for the selection that the patient has forgone. To put it in a formula: he must turn his own unconscious like a receptive organ towards the transmitting unconscious of the patient. He must adjust himself to the patient as a telephone receiver is adjusted to the transmitting microphone. Just as the receiver converts back into sound waves the electric oscillations in the telephone line which were set up by sound waves, so the doctor's unconscious is able, from the derivatives of the unconscious which are communicated to him, to reconstruct that unconscious, which has determined the patient's free associations”. (Freud 1912a, pp. 115-116). Thus, it could be inferred that while free association is the core part of Freud's 'fundamental rule', its implementation also includes the analyst's complementary part. In “The Dynamics of Transference”, Freud (1912b) explored the interruption of the chain of free associations in light of transference resistance. He recommended to interpret to the patient that “…he is being dominated at the moment by an association which is concerned with the doctor himself or with something connected with him” (Freud 1912b, p. 101). Here, the view that resistances are inevitable, an essential part of every analysis and the obverse of the defensive side of the unconscious pathogenic conflicts, becomes even more highlighted: Transference resistances are the most serious hindrance to a successful cure, and yet their correct analytic understanding and interpretation are the most powerful therapeutic tool of the psychoanalyst. Aware that ‘rules of the game’ are not absolute, Freud, articulating the fundamental rule in “On Beginning the Treatment” (1913a), cautions:
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