Free Association: From Freud to Current Use—The Effects of Training Analysis on the Use of Free Association

Freud probably created free association to minimize the possibility that the psychoanalyst’s suggestion might play any role in psychoanalytic treatment, thus assuring the scientific status of such treatment. Freud admittedly developed a personal psychoanalytic technique to suit himself as an individual. Candidates are instructed to utilize free association and also learn about it by identifying with its use by their training analyst. This identification with the training analyst probably plays the most significant role in the candidate’s learning to utilize free association, and therefore requires a discussion of training analysis in this article about free association. Mounting criticisms of recognized vulnerabilities of training analysis have led to numerous recommendations to terminate the training analyst system. Hopefully, doing so may provide candidates with a wider choice of analysts and changed educational emphases that might facilitate their selecting techniques to initiate and conduct analytic treatment best suited to them individually, as Freud advised, rather than acquiring standard analytic techniques.