ABSTRACT
This chapter on free association and the transference focuses on the transference as resistance to free association. Initially, psychoanalysts assumed the patients were resisting free association because of the transference and certainly there was and is some truth to this. Unfortunately, however, the more egregious and recalcitrant resistance to free association is now resident in the psychoanalyst's preoccupation with the transference, which precludes the psychoanalyst's receptiveness to the analysand's free associations. When this resistance is overcome, it will be possible for subsequent generations of analysts to return to non delusional systems of thought. Viewed from the perspective of the transference, the analysand's unconscious recognises the analyst as a mental function constituted through a relationship. The analysand understands that as the psychoanalyst is receptive to free association, unconscious thinking can take place between two minds that have divided functions: the one mind is to speak openly without reflection or censorship and the other mind to listen freely.
