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because it does not specify whether the elaboration of the content and process of free association should be an extrospective or an introspective (empathic) one. The Self psychologist's emphasis is not on the possible mechanisms or processes of empathy (about which there is a great deal of controversy), but on the empathic vantage point of observation; the view from within (Ornstein 1995, p. 499-500). III. Cc. Post-Bionian Perspective: Free Association and Reverie Thomas Ogden (1996, 2007) put forth a reformulation of free association within a Bionian frame of reference, applicable especially to analytic work with patients who are either unable to dream for an extended period of time and/or to communicate their dreams in the form of free associations. In this perspective, in the absence of alpha-function (either one's own or that provided by another person), a person unable to dream is trapped in an endless, unchanging world. ‘Undreamable experience’, whether it be the consequence of predominantly external or intrapsychic forces (external traumatizing event or being ‘internally traumatized’/overwhelmed by conscious and unconscious fantasy), trauma remains with the individual as undreamt dreams in such forms as psychosomatic illness, split-off psychosis, ‘dis-affected’ states (McDougall, 1984), pockets of autism (Tustin, 1981), severe perversions (De M'Uzan, 1984) and addictions. In his original extension of Bion with Winnicottian accents, Ogden views the analytic process as centrally involving a dialectical interplay between states of reverie of the analyst and analysand, resulting in the creation of a third analytic subject. It is through the (asymmetrical) experience of the analytic third by the analyst and analysand that ‘the drift’ of the unconscious internal object world of the analysand is understood and (eventually) verbally symbolized. The state of reverie of the analytic pair that is so critical a medium for the creation and experiencing of the analytic third requires conditions of extreme privacy, which must be safeguarded by analytic technique. Here, the patient is ‘free to talk’ as much as ‘free to be silent’, which is Ogden’s version of the Winnicottian ‘capacity to be alone in the presence of another’. Both the analysand and the analyst co-create the dreams (within the inter-subjective space of the analytic third) which are ultimately the property of the patient, and both co- associate to such dreams in reverie, creating alpha function, eventually internalized by the patient as the unconscious symbolic activity of dreaming. The role of such an analytic technique lies predominantly in safeguarding the privacy of analysand and analyst and in creating and preserving conditions for conscious and unconscious communication between them. James Grotstein (1984), writing on primitive mental states of borderline patients, bordering on psychosis, who seem to associate freely but upon further analysis whose associations appear to be desultory, chaotic fragments of archipelago-like thoughts or feelings which are seemingly disconnected and meaningless; journalistic accounts of their internal world. Theirs are loose associations rather than free associations, and they represent the breakdown of the protectively organizing and synthesizing function of the primary object
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