ABSTRACT
At the very heart of psychoanalytic practice resides a stunning opposition of aims. The patient presumably comes for analysis because of psychic ailments which invite concentrated attention and interpretive hard work on the part of each participant, yet both are meant to abandon intentions that logically arise from the assumed task and give themselves over to the free association of ideas. Will is immediately defeated. The wish for knowledge must not interfere with a method that defers heightened consciousness in favour of a dreamier frame of mind, encouraging the free movement of images, ideas, pregnant words, slips of the tongue, emotional states and developing relational positions.
