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or dissolved, free associations retain a crucial role in the psychoanalytic treatment. In a new, transformed conceptual context, the use of the term 'associative thought', besides being not bound to specific theoretical presuppositions, is aimed at highlighting a special type of mental activity, which naturally and spontaneously occurs in daily life and which, once placed in the analytical situation, acquires the specific function of exploring the internal word. With a creative use of ‘the potential space’ (Winnicott 1968), the associative way of thinking is fostered by the analytic situation, where two elements (Sterba 1934) come into play: on the one hand the mode of thinking within oneself, normally experienced when the mind aimlessly wanders here and there as in daydreaming (Sterba’s ‘experiencing ego’); and on the other an activity of self-observation and verbalization (Sterba’s ‘observing ego’).
IV. D. CLINICAL PROCESS AND FREE ASSOCIATION IV. Da. Factors Limiting Free Association
In practice, the contradictory nature of free association makes it impossible to fulfil completely, but its greater or lesser achievement depends on factors that limit its use and others that facilitate it. In terms of limiting factors, basically two can be identified: Overall patient’s pathology and personality organization; and specifically, harsh and hyper-critical superego. Specific factors are outlined below: a) Factors due to the patient’s pathology . There is no doubt that free association and psychopathology are in a proportionally inverse relationship: the greater the pathology the lesser the capacity for association. Therefore, if we perceive free association from this perspective, its development within the psychoanalytic process will depend on the resolution of the hindering pathology. Consequently, free association could be regarded as one of the indicators of the progression of the analytic process, or, in other words, the internal freedom of the patient. Influential in Europe, North American Otto Kernberg ’s (2015a) description of particular distortions in the process of free association characteristic of patients with narcissistic personality disorders, commonly encountered in the early and middle phases of their analytic treatment, are of particular relevance. Catalina Bronstein (2004) points out that one of the limiting factors on the associative process is the existence of a harsh and critical superego . She bases her ideas mainly on Bion, who considers that the desire for knowledge of truth is elementary and necessary for mental health, a particular form of object relation, a link. “This K-link makes possible a process enabled and fostered by loving, permissive, internalized objects that can bear frustration and psychic pain and contribute to the modification of hostile feelings that are aroused during the learning process. This is what leads to free associations that promote expansion of thought, doubt, curiosity and knowledge.” (Bronstein, 2004, p.487) This concept of K, the author notes, “seems to bring together two processes: a capacity to associate and to come in touch with the associations produced”; in other words, the “Freud’s notion that thinking lies between impulse
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