Free Association Continues

ABSTRACT

Lothane’s description of the development of free association from Galton’s one-person perspective through Freud’s use of both one- and two-person perspectives is outstanding. He characterizes free association as emphasizing the unconscious communication between both analyst and patient. I agree with his position and my discussion illustrates how both analyst and patient unconsciously prime each other to create the therapeutic process. The process can be lively and dramatic, and Lothane’s understanding of the importance of drama has led him to develop the term dramatology to describe the ongoing therapeutic drama that is created in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy as part of this unconscious communication of feeling. The concept of free association continues to develop through these new concepts of how the communication of feeling and knowledge take place unconsciously. I then suggest an even larger field of influence of both patient and analyst that includes unconscious communication of uncanny knowledge that will at times create anomalous experiences. The crucial factor for a good outcome seems to be the depth of the emotional engagement between patient and analyst.

Acknowledgments

I thank Maurine Kelber Kelly, Ph.D., FIPA, Helen K. Gediman, Ph.D., ABPP, Eve Golden, M.D., and Sherwood Waldron, M.D., for their thoughtful and helpful comments on this discussion.

Notes

¹ Barbara Mautner (1994) believed that Freud overcame the block only after writing the paper “Screen Memories” (1899), in which he used the dream after all, but in disguised form as the memory of a little girl in a meadow of yellow flowers. Mautner contended that these images and the setting of this so-called “memory” are far more like dream than like remembrance. And Strachey (Freud, 1900) pointed out in the introduction to Freud’s paper that the literature on screen memories usually uses examples of later memories screening early memories, not early memories screening later ones; so, if this really was a screen memory, it was an uncharacteristic example.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Fonya Lord Helm

Dr. Helm is Training and Supervising Analyst, Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and the Contemporary Freudian Society.