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Expanding on previous research on unconscious processes in cognition (Shevrin 1973, 2006; Shevrin, Williams, Marshall, Hertel, Bond, and Brakel 1992; Snodgrass, Bernat and Shevrin 2004), neurolinguistic models of parallel-distributive processing (Seidenberg and McClelland 1989), and dual-systems theories (Stanovich and West 2000), the present study, especially relevant to the concept of free associations, was to demonstrate an important qualitative difference between conscious and unconscious lexical processes described by Freud (1895, 1911) as primary and secondary process’. These correspond to different modes of relationships between word meaning and word presentation: while in the secondary process the word meaning and word presentation are integrated, in the unconscious primary process the word meaning and its perceptual aspects are dissociated (when unrelated word meanings are activated by the word presentation). A complex methodology included the subliminal presentation of palindromic (reversible) words (e.g. dog-god) of variable affective charge; measures for anxiety; personality characteristics, and defensive styles. The results seemed to support the main hypothesis that words could be processed as perceptual stimuli (in a bi-directional manner) when dissociated from customary word meaning. When the novel reverse processing occurred, the new words subsequently activated their own semantic network. When the words were presented subliminally, and individual differences, anxiety level and measure of repressiveness were taken into account, the link between an emotional condition (anxiety level) and lexical processing (activation of semantic associations) became apparent. The finding that structurally ambiguous words can be processed for multiple meanings has clinical implications in understanding how linguistic elements are used in free associations during the regression typically associated with transference. In the midst of transference-regression, the earliest experience with words as sounds embedded in the affective interaction with the caretaker is activated. As such, the sounds of words become carriers of emotions and relational significance, long before their meaning and semantic significance is apprehended. Regression to this level occurs in dreams, symptom formation, and in free associations. The authors conclude that “We can follow the free associative path to insight with greater clarity if we understand that the perceptual use of words draws upon this deeper, earlier level of emotional and relational significance, and we can thereby understand how ambiguity …in language operates in primary process thinking. This is especially important…given Freud’s (1915) conceptualization that the ‘talking cure’ operates, at least partially, by linking the ‘thing presentation’ with the ‘word presentation…” (Villa, Shevrin, Snodgrass, Bazan, and Brakel 2006, p. 134).
VIII. SUMMARY – CONCLUSION
In North America , the conceptualization, instruction, timing, and use of free association as part of the fundamental methodology and technique of psychoanalysis has
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