Limitations to free association and interpretation

A core challenge that emerged from the historically based critique of Freud 's work that constitutes Freud Evaluated: The Completed Arc (Macmillan, 199 1, 1997) was to Freud's claim that the basic rule of psychoanalysis for inq uiring into the causes of symptoms was unaffected by his "suggestions." Tha t is, in demanding that the patient tell the analyst whatever came to mind with complete candor, the patient would not be led astray by the analyst's ideas about the possible causes of the symptoms. In this article, the assum ptions underlying Freud's belief in the validity of the method of free asso ciation are made explicit and criticized. The basic indetermination inheren t in interpreting material apparently recovered by the method is also made explicit. Some of the consequences of the method for psychoanalytic develop mental theories and for deciding between the variant schools of psychoanaly sis are set out.