Free Association as the Foundation of the Psychoanalytic Method and Psychoanalysis as a Historical Science

Freud established psychoanalysis as a historical science and free association as its basic method of healing and research, differentiating a theory of method from theories of disorder. Psychoanalytic therapy was based on the fundamental rule of free association as an indispensable instrument for decoding and interpreting such phenomena as dreams, daydreams, hallucinations, delusions, and enactments occurring in various normal and pathological states, juxtaposing formulaic interpretations with free associations and process interventions. It was embraced by the first (Ferenczi, Jung) and second generation (Reik, Isakower) followers of Freud, and by contemporary analysts. The evolution of free association in Freud is surveyed during four periods and themes: (a) the prepsychoanalytic, 1888–1892; (b) 1893–1895, in the Studies on Hysteria; (c) 1900 in The Interpretation of Dreams; and (d) 1912–1915 in the papers on technique. The purpose of this article is to validate free association as a method for exploration of unconscious processes, to ground the psychoanalytic method as historical, and address the question is Freud’s working out of free association still relevant today.