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senseless, too unimportant or irrelevant.” (1924, p.195; Italicized original German terminology added). Freud then explicitly discusses the non-free character of the fundamental rule, “…the so-called ‘free’ association would prove in fact to be unfree, since, when all conscious intellectual purposes had been suppressed, the ideas that emerged would be seen to be determined by the unconscious material. This expectation was justified by experience.” (1924, p.195; (Italic added). Immediately thereafter, Freud implies that the 'association' of ideas is not an activity undertaken by the patient alone, but it is complemented by the by the analyst’s interpretive activity: “When the ‘fundamental rule of psycho-analysis’ which has just been stated was obeyed, the course of free association produced a plentiful store of ideas which could put one on the track of what the patient had forgotten. To be sure, this material did not bring up what had actually been forgotten, but it brought up such plain and numerous hints at it that, with the help of a certain amount of supplementing and interpreting, the doctor was able to guess (to reconstruct) the forgotten material from it. Thus, free association together with the art of interpretation performed the same function as had previously been performed by hypnotism [1924 , pp. 195-196]. In the context of freshly minted Structural theory (Second Topography) of id, ego and superego, the defenses and resistances are viewed as the ego's response to (the signal of) anxiety. Consequently, as Freud classified resistances as stemming from the ego, from the id, or from the superego, he came to view the clinical technique of using free associations for working through of resistances. as based on the ego as the sole seat of anxiety (Freud 1923, 1926, Busch 1992, 1993, 1995). It was on the grounds of Structural Theory (Second Topography) that Freud delved further into the complexities of how conflict between psychic agencies, (ego, id and superego), result in certain defensive attitudes underlying specific symptomatology, influence resistance to free association, when he described, how, for instance, “…it is especially difficult for an obsessional neurotic to carry out the fundamental rule of psycho-analysis. His ego is more watchful and makes sharper isolations, probably because of the high degree of tension due to conflict that exists between his super-ego and his id” (Freud 1926, p. 121). . Although Freud's clinical brilliance led him to understand that resistances to free association were inevitable, necessary, and even useful components of the psychoanalytic process, it was left up to the next generations of post-Freudian thinkers to reach a fuller understanding of the clinical potential of working through resistances (Gray 1982, Kris 1982, Busch 2009).
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