FREE ASSOCIATION: HISTORY, METHOD AND HOW IT WORKS - PSYCHOLOGY - 2024

The free association is as much a method as a rule within psychoanalysis school of thought founded by Sigmund Freud. It is still used by psychoanalysts today despite its antiquity, given its effectiveness in eliciting unconscious contents in patients, especially when they have difficulties in articulating repressed thoughts into words.

Freud discovered that the symptoms that a patient had were overdetermined by various causes, memories and unconscious experiences. He also discovered that the mere enunciation of such traumatic memories only alleviated the symptom but could not cure the disease.

Free association consists of the patient saying everything that comes to mind, without trying to filter it in any way. For example, you might say "say what comes to mind in every word I mention." The patient would have to answer what comes to mind when saying various words such as "childhood", "school", "play", "love", etc.

The patient is assured of a safe and intimate environment to be able to say what he wants without inhibitions. In turn, the therapist assures him that whatever he says will be useful for the analysis.

How does free association work?

The patient falls into a kind of "trap" by believing that what he says is not related to his problems when in reality the opposite occurs: what he says is closely related to his problems, only that he cannot realize it because the connection between what he says and what he feels is repressed.

This happens because the psychic material is multidimensional: it is arranged as a network of memories in different dimensions. The “free” associations actually refer to multiple scenes (most of the time traumatic) related to the symptom, that is, it is over-determined.

Therefore, although at first what the patient says sounds crazy, eventually he gets to talk about the problem itself. He tends to "go around" the issue showing that the resistance is concentric, and that the problem is woven into a multiplicity of memories and affects.

Within these resistances are the defense mechanisms, which operate by safeguarding the forgetfulness of the unconscious content or memory, trying to prevent the patient from remembering or saying what makes him feel bad.

The cathartic method no longer works, as it is not about the patient venting or reliving their memories to solve them in another way. In this new method, the importance is in being able to put into words what until then it has been impossible to enunciate.

With the entry of these contents on the symbolic plane (that is, on the plane of words), the patient can think of infinite ways of saying what he thinks or feels and, therefore, infinite ways also of interpreting his own memories and make them part of your life story.

History of free association

Freud, early in his career, worked with Josef Breuer conducting studies on hysteria. Hugely influenced by the developments of the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, he began to experiment with hypnosis as a technique within the cathartic method, which consisted of releasing trauma and painful memories through the word.

This technique consisted of placing a person in an altered state of consciousness close to sleep, in such a way that they respond to stimuli from the experimenter. It was used to steal information that the patient was unable to give while awake.

Their goal was to get the patients to relive the trauma they experienced for which they had developed neurotic symptoms, thanks to the fact that by being hypnotized, the patients "broadened" their consciousness.

The patients experienced an abreaction, they reproduced impressions that could not be processed at the time they were experienced. This allowed them to put untransmitted affect into words, removing the pathogenic power of memories.

Sigmund Freud

However, Freud had difficulty getting his patients hypnotized. He concludes that not everyone is liable to fall into this state as well as recognizes that he is not a good hypnotist. Looking for an alternative, he develops the method of suggestion.

Similar to hypnosis, this method consisted of lightly pressing the patient's head, an action that allowed the recall of unconscious thoughts and memories, as well as the ability to enunciate them through words.

Using suggestion, Freud encountered an opposing force to the appearance of unconscious memories, resistance. Only when defeated could memories appear. He concludes that the force that resists must be related to the repressive force.

When he found that the memories that arose were not directly related to the symptom that the patient suffered, Freud decided, once again, to abandon this technique. This is how he develops the method of free association.

What happens when you freely associate?

In free association the same forces that produce our dreams work, that is, the mechanisms of condensation and displacement.

Condensation

Condensation is the mechanism by which in a single content affect and memories converge from different places but keeping an associative link between all. What is said in the association carries condensed unconscious contents. Therefore, the contents are superfluous only at first glance.

Displacement

Displacement is the mechanism thanks to which the affect of a representation is detached to be linked to an originally not very intense representation. This representation maintains an associative link with the first.

This mechanism can be observed when the subject mentions traumatic memories or thoughts, feeling them as alien to him, while he may have difficulties talking about apparently everyday or mundane issues.

Both forces are intimately linked and work together. Thus, a memory has several affects condensed thanks to the different affective displacements from other memories, which leads that first memory to condense others as much as they can be linked in the associative chain.

Free association method (from the analyst)

This method was born together with the new technique of the same name. While the patient is saying what comes to mind, without using censorship or resisting to say something, the analyst remains in a state of floating attention.

In this state the analyst also puts aside his own unconscious resistances and preconscious prejudices, in such a way that he does not privilege any content over another. It is a counterpoint to the work carried out by the patient in the therapeutic space.

Thus, the analyst allows his Unconscious to weave the network of connections between affections and memories that the patient says in a quasi-incoherent way, so that communication between the two occurs from unconscious to unconscious.

The patient gives a discourse to the analyst, with certain unconscious connections established towards what is painful for him. The analyst, for his part, makes use of his own unconscious to interpret this discourse and elucidate the unconscious connections that the patient is unable to recognize for himself.

By giving the analyst an interpretation of his speech, the patient is able to make those repressed contents conscious and, therefore, to rework them in such a way that they are no longer disruptive to his psyche.

Since the contents have been put into words, the analyst offers an interpretation of what the patient has said; It will first seem alien to you but it will trigger a continuous reworking of these memories and affects in such a way that it becomes part of your consciousness and loses its traumatic character.

Other uses of free association

Although this technique was born in the clinical field with a therapeutic purpose, the fact of being an “easy” way of manifesting the unconscious soon achieved the interest of characters outside of psychoanalysis and, consequently, the expansion of this technique in other fields and for other purposes.

Its use became popular especially in the artistic field, with artists such as Salvador Dalí using it to evoke original ideas and without the censorship of conforming to the artistic fashions and expectations of the time.

Salvador Dalí was one of the greatest exponents of surrealism, an artistic trend that focused on valuing the irrational and unconscious as essential elements of art. Intimately related to Psychoanalysis in its contents, it is not surprising that they have also adopted some of its techniques.

Within this current, free association was known as automatism. The poets dedicated themselves to writing whatever phrase, feeling or thought occurred to them without paying attention to rhyme or meter, respecting only their imagination and associative dinner.

In the field of painting, the proposal was similar: the painter had to look at the blank canvas and let himself be carried away by his imagination, without paying attention to prejudices about technique or style.

The unconscious is reflected in the apparently absurdity of surrealist themes, given that dreams and their productions are painted. They do not have a logic and most of the time they do not respond to real objects.

André Bretón, another great exponent of surrealism, made use of free association to try to express, through his art, a connection between conscious and unconscious reality, trying to bring them closer and show them as not so different from each other.

conclusion

Free association was the product of a need, on the part of Freud, to find an alternative to the limitations that hypnosis and suggestion brought him. As he advanced in his theoretical developments, the cathartic method was insufficient as a form of exploration of the unconscious, something that changed when he adopted the method of free association.

Currently the method is used by psychoanalysts around the world with practically no change. This is due to its great effectiveness in stimulating the putting into words of unconscious content.

If you are interested in knowing more about your own Unconscious, you can do the test yourself: take a blank page and start writing the first thing that comes to mind, the longer you do it, the more depth the contents will reach.

References

1. Breuer, J., and Freud, S.: Studies on hysteria, Amorrortu Editores (AE), volume II, Buenos Aires, 1976.
2. Freud, S.: The interpretation of dreams, AE, XII, idem.
3. Freud, S.: Note on the concept of the unconscious in psychoanalysis, AE, XII, idem.
4. Freud, S.: Defense neuropsychoses, AE, III, idem.
5. Freud, S.: New points about defense neuropsychoses, idem.
6. Freud, S.: Project of psychology for neurologists, AE, I, idem.
7. Freud, S.: The interpretation of dreams, AE, V, idem.