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or loss of contact with the analyst from a variety of points of view, including sleepiness as a regressive defensive maneuver and a transference enactment. Noting Freud’s frequent use of metaphor in his clinical work and writing, including the train metaphor as an instruction for free association, the question remains if analysts have incorporated his imaginative mode of communicating into their work and thinking. Six out of 49 respondents (one eighth) in the Lichtenberg and Galler study have spontaneously shared using metaphors in their introduction of free association and in their work in general. Some respondents spontaneously wrote about their view of analyst’s listening and interpreting activities reciprocal to free association. Lichtenberg and Galler (1987) found them to be in line with Kanzer’s (1981) opinion that in Freud’s (1940) final version of the analytic pact, “(1) the fundamental rule is structuralized and (2) it is incorporated into a reciprocal pledge by the analyst in which his own functions are also structuralized” (p.71). It is with both the changing currents of psychoanalytic theory and a clinical practice with the ‘widening scope’ of psychoanalysis in mind, that Lichtenberg and Galler (1987) draw important conclusions from their study: The fundamental rule should consist of (1) a formal statement of explanation as to what the analysand is to experience, observe, and verbalize; (2) an explicit suggestion that in addition to their thoughts and feelings, bodily sensations, images, dreams, and references to the analyst should be verbalized; and (3) an explanation that all patients, despite their best efforts, will inevitably experience reluctance to reveal their associations, but these resistances in themselves provide an opportunity for analytic exploration. These conclusions are consistent with further theoretical and technical advances following the Lichtenberg and Galler study, i.e., Gray (1994) strenuously argued for the prioritization of micro-interpretation of resistances during any phase of analytic treatment over ‘requiring’ a patient to continuously free associate. In a broadly based contemporary psychoanalytic practice, it is generally expected that interferences/resistances will always be an inherent part of the unfolding free associative process (Volkan, 2011). III. C. PERIPHERAL USE AND RECONCEPTUALIZATION OF FREE ASSOCIATION III. Ca. Relational, Interpersonal-Intersubjective and Constructivist Approaches In general, these approaches minimize the use of free association. However, notable differences exist among individual authors. Theodore Dorpat (1999,2000) views the rule of free association as a double bind communication (Bateson (1972) which contains contradictory messages, i.e. commanding someone to be free. According to this author, free association is a negative capability (suspension of certain defensive functions), development of which requires trust and safety co- created within an interactional intersubjective context. He writes: “Free association depends not only on lessening the defenses such as repression and denial, but also on establishing a
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