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In this issue, we are pleased to present a number of operational descriptions of the method of free association, an inescapable topic in any discussion of therapy and theory. We also offer a rainbow of opinions for and against, reflecting the concord and conflict all along the history of psychoanalysis as a method and a movement, i.e., establishment. But in this context, a major difference leaps to mind: Disagreement about theory, e.g., the sexual theory of neurosis, has been the cause of ideological splits and cruel and costly internecine wars between orthodox Freudians and neo-Freudian heretics, as between Freud and Adler and Freud and Jung over the libido theory (Lothane, 1997a). Such rivalry was also seen in the past polarization between the American Psychoanalytic Association and the American Academy of Psychoanalysis or between the Deutsche Psychoanalytische Gesellschaft (DPG) and the Deutsche Psychoanalytische Vereinigung (DPV). The disagreements about free association have been rather civil, compared to those over theory.
To associate means to place together, to connect, in action or in thought. The activity of associating takes place all the time in every sphere of psychological life: in sense-perception (both as cognition and re-cognition), imagination, memory, habit formation, problem solving, scientific (Helmholtz, Poincaré) and literary creativity, and, last but not least, in every conversation—it is that basic. Intellectualist approaches to associating usually leave out feelings and emotions; however, verbal and nonverbal communication of emotions is an integral part of the flow of associations.
Associative thinking has been discussed by philosophers since Aristotle; by psychologists, e.g., William James’ “stream of thought” (1890, Chapter IX) and Charles Peirce in 1902: “If after any thought, the current of ideas flows freely, it follows the law of mental association” (cited in Buchler, 1955, p. 233); and illustrated by writers, e.g., James Joyce’s Ulys