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In The Evocative Object World, Christopher Bollas reflects on and expands some of the most central preoccupations of his life's work to date. He continually stresses the importance of returning to the original Freudian meaning of the analysand's free association or ‘free talking’ (p. 8), by which he means simply moving freely from topic to topic without ignoring the apparently irrelevant. This, together with its counterpart of the analyst's immersion in her own receptive unconscious, are the fundamental tenets of psychoanalytic practice. Indeed Bollas contends that the principal psychoanalytic objective is to increase the unconscious capacity of both patient and analyst, thereby generating ‘… a new form of creativity fostered only in the psychoanalytical space’ (p. 11). One aim of psychoanalysis is therefore to enhance unconscious communication and tune in to the unconscious thought composed of ‘… multiple lines of psychic interest’ (p. 13). Of equal significance, and working in a dialectical relationship with this enhanced unconscious receptivity, is the openness needed to be played by the objects we select in external reality and even sometimes by those foisted upon us or those that arrive by chance. At best we can allow these objects to enrich the articulation of the deeply unconscious idiom that constitutes ourselves.
The Evocative Object World takes up and further develops some of the themes Bollas began to explore in The Shadow of the Object , continued work on in Forces of Destiny , evolved most intensively in Being