Free association — a method of treatment within psychoanalysis that is present to this day — is when the analyst works with the content that the analysand reveals through a conversation without any induction of words, pre-established ideas or judgments, of so that the analysand feels comfortable and calm to talk and talk, as in the famous case of Emmy Von N., who during a session protested: “Stop asking me questions and let me talk!”, and thus this concept and method emerged.
What catches the attention of many and causes some questioning is the question of the word “free”. What is this freedom that the patient has in the consultation (or at least seeks to have)?
From this point of view, in which the analysand is free, I remember the reflection “freedom is choosing your commitment”. In other words, it would be the responsibility to be free to be fair to yourself; which makes me think of this concept of freedom that we seek in psychoanalytic sessions. Bearing in mind the instances of the second topic, in which certain social issues are found, I think that speaking without fear of what the analyst will think is a step of conviction, despite the fact that, in most cases, it is structurally confused when the patient talks about your professional, personal life, goals and everyone around you. In some cases, the patient always blames something or someone other than himself, he feels empty of himself.
So, by paying attention and knowing as Freud himself puts it, there is no right or wrong, “Losing focus is the key to finding the unconscious”, where we store much of what bothers us deeply. It is always in the unconscious that the cause of our anxieties, fears, traumas and impulses is, but the consequences that this repressed content causes transit through the preconscious and conscious, from the Id to the Ego and Superego.
It is when I believe that the patient needs to make a mixture of feelings and sensations to be able to express in words how he really feels. This can take time, after all, silence is a crucial point and moment in psychoanalytic sessions, is part and has a lot to say, the analyst is not obliged to resolve a certain discomfort in a first conversation, nor to position himself with a vague opinion. Therefore, it takes time, patience, sincerity and dedication, as these are issues that need caution, since each individual is equivalent to a universe, we are parallel universes, there are patterns and connections, but they will never be identical.
Association is up to the analyst to interpret, be attentive and know how to read between the lines; the analysand must allow himself to be free and have the courage to see himself, recognize and transform himself, seek balance in the analytical set. As the saying goes, “Life has no balance, it has tightrope walkers“, which says a lot about the analyst-analyzed relationship.
After studying the article “Loneliness, Helplessness and Creativity”, I separated the sentence from Paul Waster that says: “A life only belongs to one person who lives it. This is the solitude in which we are enclosed, as in a room, as in a skull, where our thoughts, however far they travel, always bring us back to ourselves.”. This goes for all of us, in any position, from the inside out. Plato portrays, in "The Republic", the concepts of what is an individual, society and state. Being an individual would be when a person awakens a conscience, when he awakens a sense of existence that makes him stop just existing and start living. She becomes an individual. Therefore, I bring the idea that when we become aware of being one, it is when we face the responsibility of being in the whole. To be a part and not simply to be a part, and to be a part within the psychoanalytic vision is to open the doors of our room, so often comfortable and uncomfortable, and go on this journey that is our life and that of others.
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Choosing to be a professional psychoanalyst is a dip in solitude and in the crowd at the same time, the search for self-knowledge and self-recognition makes us understand some of the defense mechanisms that our mind provides us, the big question is knowing how to deal with it, evolve with that, for when we are in the position to assist a person who also needs to do this intense and sublime dive, know that the reward is unique and very personal, it's simple, but it's not easy. Being a psychoanalyst gives you the opportunity to be different faces and personalities, to understand in order to understand, to understand in order to understand, to have empathy, to do whatever it takes as long as the intention and motivation of doing what we do makes us just a reflection of the patient, and that he can see in him what he sought in us.
