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The Question“What is freer associating?” prompts more and other dimensions of responding, requires newer ways of thinking, more comprehensive models of symbolizing, and fresh vistas regarding the doctor-patient relationship than does the question, “What is free association?” An historical survey of the cumulative fruitfulness of the responses to the latter question is essential background for pointing at the need for, and possibilities of, wider horizons opening to us in freer associating.
“Freud now [1904] found an entirely adequate substitute in the ‘associations’ of the patients; that is, in the involuntary thoughts most frequently regarded as disturbing elements and therefore ordinarily pushed aside whenever they cross an intention of following a definite train of thought.
“In order to secure these ideas and associations he asks the patient to ‘let himself go’ in what he says, ‘as you would do in a conversation which leads you from cabbages to kings.’ Before he asks them for a detailed account of their case-history he admonishes them to relate everything that passes through their minds, even if they think it unimportant or irrelevant or nonsensical; he lays special stress on their not omitting any thought or idea from their story because to relate it might be embarrassing or painful to them. In the task of collecting this material of otherwise neglected ideas Freud made the observations which became the determining factors of his entire theory.”1
In 1938, Freud wrote, “We conclude our pact then with the neurotics: complete candor on one side, strict discretion on the other…. We impose upon him the fundamental rule of analysis, which is henceforward to govern his behavior to us. He must tell us not only what he can say intentionally and willingly, what will give him relief like a confession, but everything else besides that his self-observation presents him with—everything that comes into his head, even if it is disagreeable to say it, even if it seems unimportant o