ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis does not create free association in the treatment setting. It merely provides an alteration in the conditions of ordinary association towards freedom from conscious direction. Psychoanalysis must appear an improbable venture to any but those who have experienced the powerful effects of the measures described. This chapter attempts to delineate some of the many functions of the free association method that lead to those effects. It emphasizes one aspect of all these functions: the promotion of continuity and the continuity of expression, thought, affect, sensation, memory, sense of self, personal history, relationship to the environment, and so on. The chapter also demonstrates the effects of free association on the relationship between patient and analyst. Some analysts might have linked the multiple self-criticisms for wanting to be a freeloader, for masturbation, and for "perverse" incestuous fantasies with transference wishes, heightened by the coming separation.
