Free association is one of the methods most closely linked to psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud and his followers. At the time, this strategy served to replace hypnosis and the cathartic method in the clinical consultation of the time, and today it continues to be widely used in the various schools of psychology related to the psychodynamic current.
In this article we will see what exactly free association consists of and what theoretical assumptions it is based on.
Seen superficially, free association can be summarized in one phrase: “tell me everything that comes to mind”; an activity that, seen from outside Freudian theory, seems idle and lacking a clear purpose. However, It is also a fundamental rule of psychoanalysis
In short, free association is a method of making some aspects of ideas and memories that are too traumatic to be accessible by consciousness (understood within the theoretical framework of psychoanalysis). can be revealed indirectly through language
In some way, Sigmund Freud proposed that free association was a way to overcome the mechanisms of repression and blocking of traumatic mental contents that generate a lot of anxiety. In this way, by having a patient play with language in an improvised way, the psychoanalyst would be able to reach a deeper level of understanding about that person’s inhibited problems.
The birth of the concept
Free association was born in a historical context in which it was necessary to treat many patients with neurotic mental disorders, a very broad diagnostic category that served to encompass actions and forms of thought related to sudden changes in mood and degree of activation. mental.
Just before beginning to formulate the bases of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud He was greatly influenced by Jean-Martin Charcot, a French neurologist who used hypnosis and the cathartic method to cure cases of hysteria. Freud decided to use hypnosis to explore the ailments of neurotic patients, although it took him little time to reach a very different conclusion about how the disorders should be treated.
Freud began to entertain the idea that mental problems could actually be manifestations of ideas and traumatic memories that are so stressful that they must be “isolated” and kept away from the reach of consciousness. The organism is capable of maintaining a certain balance between the contents that really circulate through consciousness and those that remain in the unconscious, but it is not capable of making the latter disappear, it only keeps them blocked. However, sometimes the contents to be repressed are so powerful that they generate the symptoms of disorders as they struggle to filter into consciousness.
Hypnosis would be a way to make the blocking mechanisms of these hidden mental contents relaxed, making it possible for them to express themselves more clearly (although always indirectly). Something similar would happen with dreams: Freud interpreted them as hypothetical manifestations of the unconscious and repressed, passed through a filter of symbolism.
But free association would allow us to know and work with the contents of the unconscious more effectively. Let’s see why.
Release the contents of the unconscious
As we have seen, the free association method is based on these assumptions:
There is at least one conscious part of the psyche, and another that is unconscious.
The contents of the unconscious part struggle to emerge into consciousness, but can never be directly examined.
Many mental disorders are the result of the clash between contents of the unconscious that want to occupy the rest of the psyche and the conscious part that tries to prevent this.
It is possible to create situations in which the content-blocking mechanisms of the unconscious relax.
Taking this into account, the psychoanalyst uses free association to allow unconscious contents that may be behind the appearance of a mental disorder to be expressed indirectly to, in this way, be able to influence them through language mechanisms.
In this way, the patient is allowed to say everything that comes to mind, without imposing conditions or vetoing topics; In this way, his self-censorship mechanisms are relaxed. By creating a context in which language use can be chaotic, It is assumed that it is the unconscious part of the psyche that is responsible for chaining words and themes together
In this way, the logic behind what is said becomes the logic of the unconscious, something that must be discovered by the psychoanalyst, who takes note of regularities in the use of symbols, topics that seem important but are never talked about directly and that seem to act as the center of a whirlwind of phrases
These ideas and hidden meanings are raised by the psychoanalyst, who gives an interpretation of what he or she has just heard. These new meanings must be faced by the patient once the therapist offers him an interpretation of what he has said that fits with what he himself is unable to express directly in words.
According to Freud, this method was much more useful than hypnosis and the use of catharsis, because it could be used on a larger number of people and allowed the reworking of unconscious discourses instead of simply waiting for the patient to find a way to reconcile with the contents of the unconscious by reliving them.
With this, we have already seen the basic aspects that characterize free association. However, this entire explanation is only valid if we accept the theoretical framework of Freud’s psychoanalysis and the epistemology from which it starts.
This last component is what means that both free association and all psychoanalytic theory in general have been highly criticized, especially by philosophers of science such as Karl Popper; basically, There is no way to set specific goals, implement a specific method, and evaluate whether it has worked or not, because everything depends on the interpretations.
In short, the interpretation that a psychoanalyst makes from the torrent of words and phrases that the patient emits during free association will be valid to the extent that the patient considers it; but, at the same time, the patient is not capable of being a reliable expert on what is happening in his head, so he can always be questioned.
Furthermore, the assumptions that in people’s mental lives there are conscious and unconscious entities that act with their own agenda is considered an entelechy, because it is something impossible to prove: the unconscious part will always manage not to be revealed.
Thus, in the practice of contemporary psychology, free association remains one of the elements of the history of psychology, but it is not considered a scientifically valid tool.
