423 B.C. refers to The Clouds by Aristophanes, a burlesque of the school of Socrates in which Socrates and the Greek chorus instruct the pupil on the couch to express freely whatever comes to consciousness. The analyst, Socrates, who never published so far as we know, was far less tenacious than Freud in the search for truth in this story. The account by Aristophanes is of a presumed encounter between Socrates and a spendthrift youth which ends after the first interview with the dismissal of the pleasure-bent young man. Halpern reviews the description by Jones of Freud abandoning hypnosis in order to 'concentrate' on his 'psychical analysis'. Finally Freud 'took the hint' of Elizabeth von R and permitted her to ramble freely without interruption. He gradually abandoned touching the patient on the forehead and finally allowed her to open her eyes. Thus the technique of free association evolved over a period of some years.