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Furthermore, the examination of free association can lead to seemingly contradictory paths when each of its constituent elements is scrutinised independently: association and free . To "associate" entails linking or connecting, whereas the term 'free' (and spontaneous) has the sense of that which does not establish connections. This apparent paradox is resolved if one appreciates that "free association" is unconsciously determined. Freud's incipient idea that free association is inextricably linked to the analyst's ‘free- floating evenly hovering attention’, and that therefore the psychoanalytic fundamental rule must include both elements, has also developed further. This perspective aligns coherently with contemporary psychoanalysis, which highlights the importance of the analyst's involvement in his relationship with the patient, and consequently, the need of recognition and exploration of his countertransference in order to understand the patient. In Latin America , the contemporary research confirms as well that the technical method of free association is still in force in every psychoanalytic process, albeit some of it has been ‘transformed’ and modified, especially with the proposal of a more active involvement on the part of the analyst in working with patients with complex personality disorders. For instance, in the case of borderline patients, additional tools to free association have been developed, such as working with enactment and ‘figurability’. Latin American analysts stress that free association and free-floating attention are part of a broad context of framing and bonding, favoring the communication of unconscious contents by the patient and their technical management by the analyst. The original concept of free association as a fundamental rule of the psychoanalytic process has also been extended to situations outside clinical experience, such as in clinical research methods. In spite of its pre-analytic roots, the original psychoanalytic concept free association arises from a clinical fact. It needs to be defined and differentiated from other related concepts. Once so defined, it can be enriched, developed and other elements can be added, without reaching saturation and denaturalization. In the context of Latin American conceptual research, it can be summarily stated that the concept has reached its completeness when it begins to run the risk of denaturalization, as has happened with other concepts in psychoanalysis. In this vein, in order not to lose its clinical- theoretical specificity, free association needs to be differentiated from related concepts which may have been born out of it, such as enactment and figurability. Across all regions , post-Freudian developments of the concept free association point to its continued relevance in contemporary psychoanalysis. As psychoanalysis reaches patients of a ‘wider scope’ with traumatic histories, complex personality disorders, psychosomatic problems with impaired symbolization and representational processes, interest across regions has branched out into intense study of the different steps in developing the capacity to represent and symbolize. Reaching ‘pre-psychic’, pre-symbolic, and pre-representational experiential domain and ‘translating it’ into the patients’ inner world of primary process symbolism of
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