IPA Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis

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structural theory (Freud 1923b), free associations depicted how unconscious desires and impulses "would have made their way from the deep to the surface" (Sandler, p. 174). Ralph Greenson’s (1967) variety of resistances to free associative process, including when free association can be at the service of resistance when the patient cannot stop the flow of solipsistic associations because of a collapse of particular ego functions; it is then up to the analyst to intervene to analyze such modes of resistances or to restore the flow of the association. Donald Winnicott ’s (1968) view that communication does not begin with the acquisition of language, but in the pre-verbal interaction (‘mutuality’), as the child's ability to play and symbolize precedes the use of words. André Green’s (2000, 2005, 2006) analytic frame/setting/‘casing‘, comprising Neutrality, Abstinence, and Free association, in which he distinguishes ‘a variable fraction’ and ‘a constant fraction’. The constant fraction corresponds to the "active matrix" of a dialogical nature, consisting of the free association of the patient coupled with the free-floating attention/listening and the benevolent neutrality of the analyst. Dialogic matrix forms the core of the analytic action, whose agent is the analytic couple. The variable fraction constitutes a ‘protective case’/’casing’ of the active matrix, and corresponds to the material, secondary dispositions and arrangements, such as frequency, the patient's position and the various aspects of the analytic contract. He writes: “The active matrix is the jewel contained by the casing. One of the most remarkable phenomena of analytic speech is the patient’s functioning via free association. In conjunction with the analyst’s evenly suspended listening, this constitutes the dialogical couple which characterizes psychoanalysis” (Green 2005, p. 33). In "The central phobic position", Green (2000) proposes a model of free association consisting of non-linear alternating retroactive reverberation and anticipatory annunciation. In retroactive reverbation, certain words or certain ideas in the session evoke other parts of the material upstream with which they seem to be associated by similarities, symmetries, contradictions and antagonisms. In anticipatory annunciation the patient draws the analyst’s attention to what was going to emerge. Retroactive reverberation and anticipatory annunciation clearly indicate that behind the linear progression of the discourse, there is a two- way causality operating retrogressively and progressively in alternation. The discourse in session is then defined as a process of creation of meaning, which determines in the patient's utterance and in the analyst's listening a double movement of ‘retroactive reverberation and heralding anticipation’ (p. 444, 446). In Donald Meltzer’s (1996) publication “The Psychoanalytical Process”, there are constant conjunctions, constant configurations produced by the patient in a particular form, which come to the attention of the patient and the analyst, provoking inquiry and communication. It is the psychoanalyst, with his attitude, who allows or does not allow the patient to communicate freely (free association) the contents of his mind without having to resort to action. For this author, therefore, the frame/setting is a ‘creation’ of the analyst.

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