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Free Association:: Q. What Kind of Information Can Be Revealed by Free Association? What Are Resistances?

Free association and dream analysis are two therapeutic techniques developed by Freud to access the unconscious mind. In free association, patients freely share thoughts and memories that come to mind with the therapist in a relaxed state. Freud believed resistances to sharing certain memories indicated proximity to repressed childhood conflicts at the root of a patient's problems. The goal of psychoanalysis was to bring these repressed memories and fears to consciousness through techniques like free association and dream analysis.

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170 views2 pages

Free Association:: Q. What Kind of Information Can Be Revealed by Free Association? What Are Resistances?

Free association and dream analysis are two therapeutic techniques developed by Freud to access the unconscious mind. In free association, patients freely share thoughts and memories that come to mind with the therapist in a relaxed state. Freud believed resistances to sharing certain memories indicated proximity to repressed childhood conflicts at the root of a patient's problems. The goal of psychoanalysis was to bring these repressed memories and fears to consciousness through techniques like free association and dream analysis.

Uploaded by

Muhammad Maher
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Q. What kind of information can be revealed by free association?

What are
resistances?
Free Association:
Free association is a practice in psychoanalytic therapy. In this practice, a therapist asks a
person in therapy to freely share thoughts, words, and anything else that comes to mind. The
thoughts need not be coherent. But it may help if they are authentic.
Dream Analysis:
Dream Analysis is a therapeutic technique best known for its use in psychoanalysis.
Sigmund Freud viewed dreams as “the royal road” to the unconscious and developed dream
analysis, or dream interpretation, as a way of tapping into this unconscious material

Assessment in Freud’s Theory: Free Association and Dream Analysis


Freud considered the unconscious to be the major motivating force in life; our childhood
conflicts are repressed out of conscious awareness. The goal of Freud’s system of psychoanalysis
was to bring these repressed memories, fears, and thoughts back to the level of consciousness.
How can the psychoanalyst evaluate or assess this invisible portion of the mind, this dark arena
that is otherwise inaccessible to us? Over the course of his work with patients, Freud developed
two methods of assessment: free association and dream analysis.

Free Association:
Freud’s development of the technique of free association owes much to Josef Breuer, a
Viennese physician who befriended Freud during Freud’s early years in private practice. In
treating a young woman who showed symptoms of hysteria, Breuer found that hypnotizing her
enabled her to remember repressed events. Recalling the events—in a sense, reliving the
experiences—brought relief of the disturbing symptoms.

Freud used the technique with some success and called the process catharsis, from the
Greek word for purification. After a while, however, Freud abandoned hypnosis, partly because
he had difficulty hypnotizing some of his patients. Also, some patients revealed disturbing events
during hypnosis but were unable to recall those events when questioned later.

Seeking a technique other than hypnosis for helping a patient recall repressed material,
Freud asked the person to lie on a couch while he sat behind it, out of sight. (Freud may have
chosen this arrangement because he disliked being stared at.) He encouraged the patient to relax
and to concentrate on events in the past. The patient was to engage in a kind of daydreaming out
loud, saying whatever came to mind. He or she was instructed to express spontaneously every
idea and image exactly as it occurred, no matter how trivial, embarrassing, or painful the thought
or memory might seem.
The memories were not to be omitted, rearranged, or restructured. Freud believed that
there was nothing random about the information uncovered during free association and that it
was not subject to a patient’s conscious choice. The material revealed by patients in free
association was predetermined, forced on them by the nature of their conflict.

He also found that sometimes the technique did not operate freely. Some experiences or
memories were evidently too painful to talk about, and the patient would be reluctant to disclose
them. Freud called these moments’ resistances. He believed they were significant because they
indicate proximity to the source of the patient’s problems. Resistance is a sign that the treatment
is proceeding in the right direction and that the analyst should continue to probe in that area. Part
of the psychoanalyst’s task is to break down or overcome resistances so the patient can confront
the repressed experience.

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