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III. Ad. Free Association as a Foundation of Psychoanalytic Method, in Relation to Technical Innovations Axel Hoffer (2006) reviews the technical innovations throughout the writings of both Freud and Ferenczi and the ensuing evolution of psychoanalytic technique, and arrives at the view that “the pillars of psychoanalysis remain the analysis of resistance, transference and countertransference by the use of the free association method” (Hoffer 2006, p. 11). Using historical examples of Freud and Ferenczi’s active measures taken with patients with various character pathologies (Freud’s ‘Wolf Man’, Ferenczi’s ‘mutual analysis’ of Elisabeth Severn, etc.), as well as his own experience with a dangerously self-destructive bulimic patient, Hoffer explores different kinds of an analyst’s therapeutic ambitions, which may promote certain kinds of resistances behind the overtly compliant attitude of the patient. He writes: “As we struggle to help our patients understand as deeply as possible their choices, conflicts, and dilemmas – and find their own resolutions to them – enhancing their freedom to associate remains, in my opinion, the best we have to offer them as they decide for themselves how much they can and want to change” (Hoffer 2006, p. 22). In this context, the analyst’s therapeutic ambition, often fueled by a patient’s self-destructive symptoms and attitudes, makes freedom to associate more difficult for the patients and ultimately hinders the analyst’s evenly hovering attention. The analyst’s therapeutic and ethical wish to ‘do no harm’ is necessary and desirable, however, for the analyst “to demand change promotes compliance and hidden rebellion which can short- circuit and limit the analysis” (Hoffer 2006, p. 22). Interestingly, a similar concern/alarm over innovative approaches to analytic thought and technique replacing or minimizing free association, in the context of working analytically with the patients of wider diagnostic scope, is echoed also by quintessential relational analyst Lew Aron (below). III. Ae. Views from French Canada On both sides of the Atlantic, French analytic tradition, in line with the ‘Third Topography’ (See the separate entries THE UNCONSCIOUS and OBJECT RELATIONS THEORIES), considers a two-person mind, where a subject is not always capable of functioning within its own circle of representations as a developmental pre-requisite of the attainment of the one-person psychic autonomy of the internally conflicted Freudian subject. A consequence of working analytically with a wider scope (i.e. borderline) of patients is that the focus is often on ‘taking a ‘symbolic leap’ and “creating representations” (Haber&Haber 2004, Green 2006). Analogically to the above-mentioned Jean-Luc Donnet (2010), Dominique Scarfone (2018) continues to recognize free association as a most central feature of the method of psychoanalysis, as it operates an essential reopening of the process of translation/repression. Rooted in a Helmholtzian model of the mind, it is also congruent with modern neuroscience. Through the notion of ‘surprise’, Scarfone draws theoretical and clinical connections between free association, seduction, trauma, and transference. Multiply connected to the psychosexual
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