IPA Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis

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(1967, p.245) as "the result of a passive accommodation to the external circumstance (1967, p.245). He also considers it the most regressive and psychotic part of all types of patients (1967, p.246). (See also a separate entry SETTING) Horacio Etchegoyen (1986), in “The Foundations of Psychoanalytic Technique”, dedicated one chapter to the “Psychoanalytic Contract,” where he stresses the importance of the fundamental rule . Free association must be a generous invitation to speak freely, in the same way as it is a request to overcome resistances. For Etchegoyen, all aspects of the contract, besides being clear from the beginning, to be stricter later on, must be fair and equitable; it must be careful according to each patient, without departing from the rule. He differentiates between various meanings of the fundamental rule of free association: While a psychopath may understand that he has the freedom to say whatever he wants, it may simply be the green light for a verbal acting out, to an obsessive patient, care needs to be given so as not to create a problem of conscience. Etchegoyen argues that the formulation of free association can be presented in many ways, also depending on the personality of both the patient and the analyst. Only if it has been formulated in a clear way for analyst and patient, considering that it will not be fully complied with, can it be interpreted in favor of the analytic process and not as a failure to comply with a norm. "Free association...must give the patient… in the first place the freedom to associate, … that he can say everything he thinks; but at the same time he must know that the analyst expects him to hold nothing back, to speak without mental reservations...I try then to make the patient see not only that he is free to say everything he thinks but also that he must say it even if it costs him, in such a way that he knows that the norm exists and that his non- compliance will be the subject of my work" (p. 92, transl. by Bayon). Fernando Urribarri (2008), in his lectures and publications on contemporary psychoanalytic technique, states that "the technical rules aim at an asymmetrical and complementary functioning of the patient and the analyst… free association and floating attention, abstinence and benevolent neutrality" (p.81). According to Urribarri, the analyst then has the task of being the archivist of the history of the patient's analysis and by means of free association to search in the registers of his own preconscious memory (of the patient’s material) for which he will evoke his own free associations at every moment of the discourse. Urribari views this as a more active posture on the part of the analyst. Eduardo Laverde and Inés Bayona (2012), in a book on conceptual research in psychoanalysis, on the formulation of the fundamental rule within which free association is included, point out the broad variability of every facet of free association. They note that as far as the formulation of the rule is concerned, "there are differences of opinion and objections to one and another way of stating it, including Freud's (1913) metaphor of the traveler who describes what he sees. In conclusion, the origin of this rule is pre-analytic, and there is no agreement among analysts as to its formulation" (p. 53). In a dialogue with Bleger, Laverde and Bayona (2012) articulate a contemporary position on the free association in the context of the frame. They understand that frame obeys a methodological need, to include controlled variables in the analytic relationship and to exclude others, both in its contractual dimension at the start of the analytic process, as well as

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