free association

n.

1. A spontaneous, logically unconstrained and undirected association of ideas, emotions, and feelings.
2. A psychoanalytic technique in which a patient's articulation of free associations is encouraged in order to reveal unconscious thoughts and emotions, such as traumatic experiences that have been repressed.

Free association (considered the "fundamental rule") is the method used in psychoanalytic treatment. In free association the patient says whatever comes to mind without exercising any selectivity or censorship. It is based on Freud's deterministic concept of psychic phenomena: "We start, as you see, on the assumption, which he does not share in the least, that these spontaneous thoughts will not be arbitrarily chosen but will be determined by their relation to his secret—to his 'complex'—and may, as it were, be regarded as derivatives of that complex" (1906c, p. 108-109). The origin of this new method of therapy can be dated from Emmy von N's irritation with Freud for interrupting her when she spoke. The method was not codified until later and would become the keystone of the technique of psychoanalytic treatment. There is no mention of this in the Studies on Hysteria. At that time a pressure on the forehead was intended to bring forth an idea or an image with the help of which the cathartic method could be exercised.

The first mention of the fact that redirecting the patient's attention can allow connections to emerge between a forgotten word and repressed ideas appears in the analysis of the forgetting of "Signorelli's" name (1898b). But it is in the chapter on "The Method of Interpreting Dreams" (1900a) that the process is described in detail: "We . . . tell him that the success of the psycho-analysis depends on his noticing and reporting whatever comes into his head and not being misled, for instance, into suppressing an idea because it stikes him as unimportant or irrelevant or because it seems to him meaningless" (p. 101). The technique was used in the analysis of Dora and Freud specifies that he managed to "the pure metal of valuable unconscious thoughts can be extracted from the raw material of the patient's associations" (1905e, p. 112). For example, "It is a rule of psycho-analytic technique that an internal connection which is still undisclosed will announce its presence by means of a contiguity—a temporal proximity of associations; just as in writing, if 'a' and 'b' are put side by side, it means that the syllable 'ab' is to be formed out of them (p. 39) . . . in a line of association, ambiguous words . . . act like a point at a junction (p. 65n) . . . I am in the habit of regarding associations such as this, which bring forward something that agrees with the content of an assertion of mine, as a confirmation from the unconscious of what I have said (p. 57) . . . [the unwillingness on Dora's part to follow the rules of dream-interpretation] coupled with the hesitancy and meagreness of her associations with the jewel-case, showed me that we were here dealing with material which had been very intensely repressed" (p. 69n).

It is in "On Beginning the Treatment" (1913c) that Freud made these ideas explicit: "One more thing before you start. What you tell me must differ in one respect from an ordinary conversation. Ordinarily you rightly try to keep a connecting thread running through your remarks and you exclude any intrusive ideas that may occur to you and any side-issues, so as not to wander too far from the point. But in this case you must proceed differently. You will notice that as you relate things various thoughts will occur to you which you would like to put aside on the ground of certain criticisms and objections. You will be tempted to say to yourself that this or that is irrelevant here, or is quite up important, or nonsensical, so that there is no need to say it. You must never give in to these criticisms, but must say it in spite of them—indeed, you must say it precisely because you feel an aversion to doing so. Later on you will find out and learn to understand the reason for this injunction, which is really the only one you have to follow. So say whatever goes through your mind. Act as though, for instance, you were a traveler sitting next to the window of a railway carriage and describing to someone inside the carriage the changing views which you see outside. Finally, never forget that you have promised to be absolutely honest, and never leave anything out because, for some reason or other, it is unpleasant to tell it" (p. 135).

This method of free association was often confused with the association experiments involving stimulus words that Eugen Bleuler and Carl Gustav Jung were doing at the same time at the Burghölzli clinic. Even though he referred to the method in "Psycho-Analysis and Establishment of Facts in Legal Proceedings" (1906c), Freud was careful to differentiate his own work from it and, on February 26, 1908, referred to this technique as a "coarse method, to which psychoanalysis is far superior" (Nunberg and Federn, 1962-1975, p. 335). But for years commentators, especially in France, have attributed its use to him.

In 1920, in "A Note on the Prehistory of the Technique of Analysis," Freud recognized the "cryptamnesia" that led to his claiming to be the inventor of a method, a description of which he had read when he was fourteen in a text by Ludwig Börne, entitled, "The Art of Becoming an Original Writer in Three Days." In it he stated that the best way for the writer to banish inhibitions and censorship was to write down everything that came to mind for a period of three days.

Once again we see how an isolated idea that circulates in the popular mind is inadequate on its own and what developments are needed for it to be integrated within a body of thought that transcends it. The method of free association, by freeing speech in its search for a hidden truth, has become the principal method of producing the material for analysis, even if, through overproduction, the freedom it offers sometimes becomes a form of resistance to any form of interpretation.

Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund. (1906c). Psycho-analysis and the establishment of facts in legal proceedings. SE, 9: 103-114.

Nunberg Hermann, and Federn, Ernst. (1962-1975). Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. New York: International Universities Press

—ALAINDE MIJOLLA

Sigmund Freud gave a new direction to the study of the association of ideas as he developed his therapeutic techniques in clinical practice. He came to claim that the unforced remarks made by patients during treatment unwittingly revealed their wishes and motives, and thereby enabled the therapist to circumvent resistance to personal disclosure. In 1912, in The Dynamics of Transference, he described his fundamental principle of psychoanalysis as the requirement that the patient repeats whatever comes into his or her head without criticizing it.

Interest in applying principles of organization to the headlong abundance of thoughts, images, memories, and perceptions that distinguish mental life had previously overlooked the possible importance of personal experiences and preoccupations. Aristotle's description of the formal (similarity, contrast) and accidental properties (contiguity in time or place) that linked thoughts, had been taken up by Locke and Hume to provide a detailed but highly abstract explanation of the contents of the stream of consciousness. No attempt to account for the individual colouring of associations was made by the British empiricists, even after an experimental approach had been introduced by Francis Galton. Of course Freud's clinical findings had been intuitively anticipated by dramatists and novelists, and perhaps most powerfully realized in their depictions of suffering so great as to effect disintegration of syntax. Hamlet's wordplay though dark is not impenetrable, and it has the effect of drawing the anxious listeners into the drama of his distress.

Jung, who in so many of his researches followed where Freud led, had in fact begun to study free association before they met. He approached the subject from a different angle but also came to focus on the personal significance of associations. His interest had been aroused by his application, as an instrument of clinical investigation, of the word-association test invented by Galton. This test had provided a technique for putting the mechanism of association under scrutiny, although it suffered the limitation of being so atomistic as to produce highly artificial results. The procedure was very simple: the experimenter worked through a list of prepared words, perhaps 50 or 60, calling out each one in turn. The subject was required to respond as quickly as possible with the first word that came into his or her mind, and the experimenter recorded this together with the time lapse between stimulus and response. The early work looked at formal relations between word pairs and attempted a variety of classifications of responses. The vast amount of data collected, particularly by Wilhelm Wundt and his associates, attracts little interest now, being regarded as a recalcitrant body of facts without practical application. Jung temporarily breathed new life into the procedure by noticing that the responses of psychiatric patients often revealed their most intimate concerns. He described a group of responses bound together by a pervasive feeling as a complex, and transformed the test into a diagnostic tool. He also used it to make interesting observations on speech disturbances in psychotic states, regarding intense emotional preoccupation as a handicap to rational thought. In extreme disturbance, the Aristotelian principles of association became stronger than the influence of any particular directing idea, leading to a loosening of logical associations, and sometimes to a loss of any unifying feeling tone. Even so, beneath the fractured surface of psychotic communication, it was possible to find evidence of profound hurt and compensatory aggrandizement. That this early work made him receptive to the more sophisticated innovations of Freud is clearly indicated in the conclusion to his paper 'Association, Dream and Hysterical Symptom', published in 1906, a year before he met Freud. He wrote there that 'the interferences that the complex causes in the association experiment are none other than the resistances in psychoanalysis as described by Freud'.

Freud's approach to the treatment of neurotic disorders evolved over many years. In its final form, after he had abandoned the use of hypnosis, he would sit behind his patient who lay on a couch. There was no agenda of problems or topics to be discussed, and the session would be facilitated by Freud's non-emotive promptings. Although the therapeutic alliance required that the conscious attitude of the patient should be desire for change, Freud recognized that there would inevitably be unconscious resistance, as the abandoning of neurotic defences involved the renunciation of cherished illusions. The degree of resistance was a principal factor determining the length of therapy. The method of free association enabled him to capitalize on the unintended candour of the patient and make interpretations which could then be reflected on. Central to this endeavour was the examination of dream material, which provided a 'royal road to the unconscious' and a privileged glimpse of primary process thinking (see dreaming). In this primitive style of thinking, the categories of space and time were said to be ignored and images tended to become fused and distorted by condensation and displacement. The key to understanding unconscious mental activity was the pleasure principle, which determined that all frustration of instinctual drives was repaired by hallucinatory wish-fulfilment. Freud regarded his longest book, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), as his seminal work, and 30 years after its first publication described it as containing the most valuable of all his discoveries. So it was that dreams, supplemented by recollections and anecdotes, provided the raw material which through interpretation revealed the motives and wishes of the patient. At first these were ill discerned but later became clearer through the lessening of resistance and the resolving of transference feelings for the analyst. It was not uncommon for a powerfully charged and unusually lucid dream to coincide with a therapeutic breakthrough. Freud insisted on the objectivity of the method, contrasting his approach, in which the interpretation of associations is drawn from the patient by gentle probing, with the classical account of Artemidorus (2nd century ad), in which the adept authoritatively imposed his view on the dreamer.

Nowhere more clearly than in The Interpretation of Dreams does Freud display his extreme rationalism. It is as though he employs a psychological principle of sufficient reason, as every feature of a dream is explained in terms that illuminate the conflicts of the dreamer. While the sheer analytical power of his thinking is impressively demonstrated, there are perhaps few therapists today who would interpret with such complete confidence or not allow for undecidable or meaningless elements. Moreover, it is difficult not to feel that Freud's strength of personality imposed itself both on the material he analysed and on the patients themselves. Accounts by patients of their therapy with him tend to confirm this impression and contradict his own description of assumed emotional detachment during therapy. Perhaps Freud's patients tended to have Freudian dreams, as later Jung's patients had Jungian dreams. Nevertheless, the points of agreement between Freud and Jung seem much more profound than the points of difference. Jung subsequently developed his own therapeutic style to suit his temperament, and one of his innovations was to invite the patient to fantasize in the therapeutic sessions and thereby actively promote free association.

As psychotherapeutic practice has proliferated, so ways of conducting therapy have multiplied. The most important general feature of newer therapies has been the attempt to reduce the length of the procedure, from years to months, or even to a fixed number of sessions agreed in advance. In order to abbreviate therapy, various devices have been employed for breaking down resistance. Some examples of this trend are: structuring the therapy sessions, strategic focusing on specific problems, concentrating on patient–therapist interactions in the here and now, and more aggressive styles of interpretation. However, the common denominator in all these approaches is the use of the free associations of the patient to point up contradictions between unconscious attitudes, wishes and motives, and the self-image which unintentionally announces alienation from fundamental impulses.

(Published 1987)

— David Angus Graham Cook

Bibliography
• Freud, S. (1900). The Interpretation of Dreams, standard edition, iv–v.
• — —  (1912). The Dynamics of Transference, standard edition, xii.
• Galton, F. (1897). 'Psychometric experiments'. Brain, 2.
• H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1956). Tribute to Freud.
• Jung, C. G. (1906). 'Association, dream and hysterical symptom'. Collection Works, ii.

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