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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 become more complex, nuanced, and individually calibrated. Especially relevant are developmental and dynamic considerations of the patient’s personality organization, particularly the ego capacities and object relations, in relation to various dimensions of the psychoanalytic situation, such as transference-countertransference field and representational- interpretive processes, as they may be variously conceptualized within different schools of thought. Depending on the particular analyst and patient, such considerations may result in preserving free association as the core element of the psychoanalytic situation, or implementing conceptual and technical modifications. These may include the moderate or minimal use of free associations, including recasting free associations in the intersubjective context or temporary suspension of free associative processes (to firm up the distinction between reality and fantasy, to fortify trust, safety and exploration of the object relationship). Other modifications may include focus on the processes rather than the contents of free associations,
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