What Exactly Does Free Association Mean?

Free association is a tool for psychoanalysis, created by the father of psychoanalysis himself, Sigmund Freud. It involves having a patient say whatever comes to their mind during a session. The goal is to remove filters and judgments about what the patient thinks and shares with their therapist.

Free association has a theoretical basis, specific goals and is done in a specific way. It’s a fundamental part of psychoanalysis, but people also use it as a technique for certain projective tests, such as the Rorschach test and the thematic apperception test (TAT).

The History of Free Association

Sigmund Freud developed the concept over a period of six years, between 1892 and 1898. Little by little he replaced hypnosis and catharsis, methods he used in the beginning, with free association. His goal: to avoid suggestion.

Freud started toying with the idea of ​​free association after he treated Mrs. Emmy Von N., one of his patients. This was in 1882. She specifically asked Freud to stop interrupting her train of thought. She wanted him to let her speak freely.

In the The Psychoanalytic Method , he went on to explain why he had chosen to drop hypnosis. After working with Breuer, Freud realized that hypnosis had only partial and temporary results.

However, free association would help to overcome a patient’s resistance. It would therefore be much easier to access things from his subconscious mind (memories, weaknesses, symbols). Moreover, the effects of free association were permanent. Another plus was that patients did not have to undergo hypnosis for this technique.

These are the reasons why Freud replaced hypnosis and catharsis with free association. He then made it the basic method of accessing and digging into his patients’ subconscious minds.

The theoretical basis of free association

When we talk, we choose the specific words we want to use to make the message we’re trying to convey coherent. We all use this process, some do it faster than others.

However, a number of mistakes can also occur: you can misspell, forget a word, repeat yourself and so on. Outside of a therapeutic setting, it’s easy to just ignore these kinds of ‘mistakes’. However, within a therapeutic setting, they are extremely important.

Psychoanalysts see these ‘mistakes’ as manifestations of your subconscious mind. It’s almost as if what you’re talking about has broken through your defensive barrier. The same happens with free association.

Here, therapists free their patients from their own self-control and help them forget their need to make sense of their ideas. It’s the perfect environment to get carried away and empower their subconscious and let them speak. They open up, and that’s when you access their subconscious.

According to Freud, exposing people’s barriers and analyzing them was a fundamental part of their healing process. He also believed that free association was the only way to do this.

However, there are three basic techniques to perform clinical analysis: free association, dream interpretation, and a Freudian slip. However, free association is most important here. Freud saw it as the technique that really distinguished psychoanalytic therapy from all other types of therapy.

How exactly can you perform free association?

Free association sometimes just happens by itself. Other times it happens through a dream, fantasy, or some other way of thinking. However, for true free association, the patient must sincerely trust his therapist.

He must understand that a conversation with his therapist is not the same as a normal conversation. It is not the same as talking to a friend or acquaintance in their daily life. It is intended that there is absolutely no judgment during the session. Nothing is right or wrong. In short, everything can be said.

The most important thing is that the patient gets carried away by his thoughts. He can then openly disclose this to his therapist. In this case, the patient allows unconscious symbols to arise for the therapist to analyze, interpret, and process.

Once the patient has managed to open his unconscious mind, he can work through it consciously. The whole point of this is to prevent anything from being a source of discomfort or conflict.

How to promote the right free association

Of course, free association is much easier if the patient is comfortable. Comfort has to do with both the therapist and the space in which the analysis is done. There should be as little stimulation as possible in the analytical environment.

In the past, a bank was used. The patient had to lie down on the couch, leaving him out of the therapist’s line of sight. This was to ensure that the patient did not feel that he was being watched, judged, or evaluated. The idea was to help him focus completely on his associations.

Then the therapist asked the patient something simple, “talk about anything” or “simply say whatever comes to mind, any image or memory.” Thus the patient was completely free to express what was going on in his head. He didn’t have to worry about whether his thoughts were coherent or satisfying his therapist.

Footnote

*Therapist could use hypnosis to access the patient’s subconscious mind; that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that after coming out of hypnosis, the patient usually couldn’t remember anything that had been said. Because of this, his barriers always came into play later on.

In the end, it was the therapist’s word against the patient’s, and that really slowed down the process.

During free association, however, the patient experiences the process fully consciously. That means he has to take responsibility for all the things he says that the therapist tries to analyze.