ABSTRACT
In reviewing the regulatory influences that impinge upon the free associations, the chapter identifies two kinds of conflict which may be encountered with the free association method: convergent and divergent. The formulation of reluctance and resistance in conflict with the thrust of the associations constituted one of Sigmund Freud's first contributions. The analysis of resistance in the conflicts of defence depends upon the persistence of the thrust of free association. The broad group of conflicts encountered with the free association method, the conflicts of ambivalence, were first characterized not as a model of the regulation of free association but in terms of the psychoanalytic theory of instinctual drives. By making conscious what was previously unconscious and by focusing attention on what had earlier been avoided, free association leads at first only to painful awareness and reluctance to go forward.
