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Kris appraises within this slim volume the methodology and processes of free association, foundations of traditional psychoanalysis that no longer seem as fundamental to many as they used to be. Perhaps the author's own sense of the complexity of his task is conveyed in the opening quotation from Wallace Stevens', Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. Presumably there is some relation here to the thirteen chapters in the book. Actually, since the analytic method is described as a joint venture that blends the associations of the patient and the analyst, it must set off a myriad of potential "whistles."
The author discounts his own originality but nevertheless achieves it in the course of fulfilling his aim—to restate other basic concepts of psychoanalysis such as resistance, transference, interpretation, and insight, in terms of free association. The advantage in so doing, he finds, is that the latter process comes closer to clinical observation but tends to be subordinated to the other superstructures that are derived from it.
With the focus on free association, which the author equates with the process of psychoanalysis that is the outcome of the systematic use of the free association method, the goal of the analyst becomes the "enhancement" of free association itself. This is accomplished with the aid of his predominant neutrality and the establishment of patterns of continuity and discontinuity. Inasmuch as these may be found in areas of thought, wish, sensation, fantasy, etc., different analysts will lean toward diverse groupings among the associations, contributing to individual styles of communication between the partners.
A degree of organization among the individual constructions is obviously necessary. Kris offers guidelines under such chapter headings as "Formulation from the Viewpoint of Free Association," "Varieties