Free association

Free association is a psychoanalytic technique in which a person says whatever comes to mind without deliberate censorship. Analysts use the resulting speech to explore unconscious thoughts and conflicts.

Psychoanalysis: A theory and clinical practice that investigates unconscious mental processes and their influence on thought and behavior. Free association is one of psychoanalysis’s principal methods for exploring unconscious material.
Sigmund Freud: An Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis and developed influential theories of the unconscious. Freud made free association central to his clinical method and psychoanalytic theory.
Guided imagery: A technique that uses deliberately formed mental images to influence feelings, attention, or behavior. Unlike free association, it directs attention toward images rather than leaving speech uncensored.
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy: A form of psychotherapy informed by psychoanalytic ideas about unconscious processes and relationships. Some forms use free association to examine recurring conflicts and patterns.
Psychoanalytic resistance: The conscious or unconscious opposition that obstructs awareness of distressing thoughts, feelings, or memories in psychoanalytic treatment. Hesitations and changes of subject can signal resistance to what free association brings forward.
Josef Breuer: An Austrian physician whose work with Bertha Pappenheim helped shape early psychoanalytic treatment. Breuer’s cathartic method preceded Freud’s use of free association as a regular technique.
Cognitive behavioral therapy: A structured psychotherapy that examines and changes unhelpful patterns of thought and behavior. Its structured questioning contrasts with free association’s open-ended speech.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy: A psychotherapy that explores how unconscious processes and earlier relationships shape present experience. It may adapt free association within a less intensive or more structured treatment.
Transference: The displacement of feelings and expectations from earlier relationships onto another person, especially a therapist. Material voiced during association may reveal feelings directed toward the analyst.
Anna O.: The pseudonym of Bertha Pappenheim, a patient whose treatment by Josef Breuer became a foundational case in psychoanalytic history. Her treatment helped establish the idea that speaking about distressing experiences could relieve symptoms.

Linked from 23 pages