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Further, Freud maintains that the psychoanalytic technique is the same as that used in the interpretation of dreams: “We instruct the patient to put himself into a state of quiet, unreflecting self-observation, and to report to us whatever internal perceptions he is able to make—feelings, thoughts, memories—in the order in which they occur to him. “(1916-17, p. 287) Then, in the context of writing on resistance (an analogy to dream censorship) , Freud repeats the four objections the patient must avoid: “…which would lead him to make a selection among these associations or to exclude any of them, whether on the ground that it is too disagreeable or too indiscreet to say, or that it is too unimportant or irrelevant , or that it is nonsensical and need not be said. We urge him always to follow only the surface of his consciousness and to leave aside any criticism of what he finds, whatever shape that criticism may take…” (ibid, p. 287, Italics added] Here one repeatedly finds another of the contradictions of psychoanalysis: if one wants to explore the depths of the unconscious, we must follow the trail of the surface of consciousness. In this work, writing on free association in view of resistance, Freud points out that one of the first things analysts find is that the fundamental rule becomes the target of the attacks of the resistance.: “The patient endeavours in every sort of way to extricate himself from its provisions. At one moment he declares that nothing occurs to him, at the next that so many things are crowding in on him that he cannot get hold of anything. Presently we observe with pained astonishment that he has given way first to one and then to another critical objection …” When patents inquire (prompted by the resistance) that the analyst cannot be so unreasonable as to be wanting them to say all these insignificant, silly and embarrassing things, “one can only reply that ‘to say everything’ really does mean ‘to say everything’” (Freud 1916- 17, p. 288). II. Bc. Free Association in the Context of the Structural Theory (Second Topography) Most broadly, Freud continued to consider everything that stood in the way of a patient's free association (and cure) a manifestation of resistance. With the introduction of the Structural theory and the second theory of anxiety (Freud 1923, 1926), a fuller psychoanalytic meaning of working with unconscious resistances became possible. While in the first theory of anxiety in the context of the (First) Topographic theory the anxiety was viewed as the result of defense, in the second theory of anxiety the ego was understood as the seat of anxiety. Defense mechanisms were defined and located in the ego. Repression was one of them. Anxiety then became a motive-trigger-signal for defense, not its result.
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