Associations and their Nature: A Foundation of Psychodynamic Science

As psychoanalysts, as therapists and observers—naturalists, if you will—what do we hear behind the couch? Or across the chair? Let's say couch, for that may be the best locale for the observations under question.

We hear a flow of words, often interspersed with silences. The silences indicate a block to the flow. The words may be spoken calmly or with emotion. Emotions propel the flow but painful ones may inhibit; such an inhibition may not be voluntary.

As we listen, the words seem linked by a thematic similarity, particularly if they flow unhampered. The theme may not be recognized by the patient, since the linkages are formed by combinations of complexity, not all arising from the same level of awareness. The thematic similarity, then, may be voluntary, consciously directed; but not always. The less the conscious direction, the more likely are the linkages based on a spatial, an auditory, or a concrete ideational similarity; the more likely are thoughts to rise de novo. We tend to favor a flow under less conscious direction, difficult as this is to achieve. Such a flow, in fact, is a bedrock of the theory of psychoanalysis, the bedrock known to Freud as “free association.”

These associations experienced inwardly as images and most importantly, words, reveal much of the mind's activity. No one can deny the power of gesture and pure emotion, of pure images, but it is through words that emotions are exteriorized and communicated. Why else would language have evolved in humans, and the brain become so highly specialized for it, if words did not yield a strong adaptive advantage? The advantage is intrapsychic in terms of releasing and ordering emotion, of structuring cognition, and interpersonal in terms of regulating dyadic and group cohesion.

Through free associations, hope, delight, shame, guilt, fear, and anger are exteriorized. The self expands and contracts. The patient