Meeting of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York

November 21, 1960. VERBAL AND NONVERBAL ASPECTS OF FREE ASSOCIATION. Mark Kanzer, M.D.

The analysand's total adaptive functioning, both in and out of the treatment situation, enters into the form and content of the verbal behavior on the couch. Words must be correlated with the affective and motor accompaniments to be interpreted effectively. The analyst should therefore be conversant with nonverbal as well as verbal modes of communication between himself and the patient. The traditional analytic guides to resistance, which are based largely on verbal clues, are lacking in specificity. Moreover, the supposition that the fundamental relationship between analyst and patient in the 'traditional analysis' is purely verbal, and that nonverbal departures must be special parameters, cannot be upheld. Nonverbal elements are inherent in the analytic technique and also in the disposition of early memories to recur predilectively in the form of acting out.

The relationship between the verbal and nonverbal was explored from various angles. Free association, it was pointed out, was not synonymous with a free play of thought, but was determined by the analytic situation. The latter is designed to facilitate a therapeutic program and involves certain controls upon external behavior which are initiated from the beginning. Nonverbal interventions should in general be directed by the same aims as those taken into consideration in setting up the analytic situation—namely, neutral measures to insure propitious conditions for the therapeutic procedure and to counteract resistance. Preferably, the intervention summons the reasonable ego to the aid of therapy and to the recognition of the particular form of resistance. On the basis of a case illustration, the pathway from unverbalized thought on the couch was traced through the acting out between sessions; measures to deal with the acting out, the subsequent dreams, and the interpretation as a final means of bringing the hidden