ABSTRACT
Freud’s invention of the psychoanalytical method has radically transformed Western epistemology. In order to know what we think we are requested to relinquish the understandable demand to be scrupulous and objective – in contemporary terms to be scientific – and abandon ourselves to the apparently loose enterprise of speaking whatever crosses our mind. To Western minds, cultivated in a patriarchal order that privileges mental adventures so long as they are mediated by custodians of consciousness, the free associative method seems not simply lax but subversive. What does it mean to seek an understanding of our inner life by abandoning ourselves to talk, talk, talk, and more talk?
