Free association and its history
Before one feels that one is solidly capable of analyzing oneself, as Karen’s patients were to do when they were discharged from their therapeutic treatment, it’s good to be aware that this method of free association is not new, and it’s precursors go all the way back to ancient meditation. Meditation was not only practiced in the East, as some people feel, mainly because many texts have been destroyed in wars and others are from obscure sources, rarely talked about now. Free association has been a bulwark in philosophy and in the more modern phenomenological sphere. Satipatthana/Vipassana methods were used to control behavior, and in many other cultures the main purpose was the same. In Stoicism, “this kind of sober alertness, or ‘mindfulness (prosoche),’ provides a mental frame of reference for one’s present experience so that the judgments and decisions that one makes increasingly become more focused on the pursuit of the good. The habit of Stoic mindfulness cultivated over time keeps a person from becoming inattentive and susceptible to acting instinctually rather than according to reason.”
Evagrius Ponticus moved in the same territory as that of Buddhist methods of being watchful of Logismoi (lo-gee-smee), tempting thoughts, to provide antidotes for sinfulness. He wanted monks to be watchful of “gluttony, impurity, greed, sadness, anger, [listlessness], vainglory, pride. Evagrius calls them the main/principal thoughts, because all other thoughts are born of them, but he does not limit the number of all evil thoughts that are born in the monk’s soul to only eight. He also mentions the thought of remembering evil, jealousy, accusation and others…In the order of spiritual development, a monk can easily recognize that he is approaching impassibility if he is attacked by ever stronger demons. Evagrius adds that the gnostic must face new, unknown temptations, because he is the first to pass the next stages of spiritual development…Anchoritism, [to withdraw from secular life], and all the ascetic efforts of the monk were aimed at purifying the soul of these eight passionate thoughts and acquiring virtues. Eight virtues are opposed to eight passionate thoughts: gluttony–moderation, impurity–purity, greed–poverty, sorrow–joy, anger–forbearance, [listlessness]–perseverance, vainglory–modesty and humbleness, pride–humility…Evagrius defines vice as the evil use of the powers of the soul against its nature, while virtue is using those powers in accordance with its nature. ‘If all evilness is generated by the intelligence, by thymos [desire for recognition], and by epithymia [craving], and of these faculties it is possible to make use in a good and in an evil way, then it is clear that it is by the use of these parts against nature that evils occur to us. And if this is so, there is nothing that has been created by God and is evil.'” The internal battle that humans face in his method is similar to Horney’s juxtaposition of constructive vs. destructive impulses. For Evagrius, this is a fight in oneself and one can easily see how this fight can in an unintended way lead to external fights, or hermetic withdrawal, when the virtuous are faced with corrupt human beings and systems. “Vice is therefore not the existence or functioning of these three parts of the soul, but their evil use by man. Evil in the world does not come from the naturally good tendencies of the soul, but from their use against nature. Thus, in another place Evagrius emphasizes that the soul acts according to nature, when its concupiscible part seeks virtue, its irascible part is fighting for virtue, and the rational is committed to the contemplation of beings…The concupiscible part of the soul are born the virtues of restraint, love, and temperance, in the irascible part bravery and perseverance, and in the rational part prudence, rationality, and wisdom.”
Another use of meditation was to empty the mind to rest in non-duality, supposedly content-less states, like found in Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, and Daoism. When the mind is at rest, it is less likely to get into trouble. “First, one withdraws from sensory engagement with the phenomenal world. Then one empties the heart-mind of intellectual and emotional content. Finally, one enters the state of cosmological integration, wherein qi, subtle breath or one’s vital force, is the primary layer of being that one listens to. This condition is described as ‘unity’ (一; yi), “emptiness” (kong or xu), and ‘identification’ (tong). As the Dao is Stillness from the Daoist prospective, by entering one’s own interior silence one returns to one’s innate nature, which is the Dao.” Whether we use terms like “stillness,” “quietude,” “peace,” “Ataraxia,” “composure,” they all lead toward equanimity.
This method has also been used for all kinds of creativity, including writing. For Michel de Montaigne, his Essays were an exercise in automatic writing. “It is a thorny and crabbed enterprise, and more than it makes shew of, to follow so strange and vagabond a path, as that of our spirit: to penetrate the shady, and enter the thicke-covered depths of these internall winding crankes; To chuse so many, and settle so severall aires of his agitations.” Ludwig Börne felt that creativity and originality could not happen without a stream of consciousness approach. “He who listens to his inner voice instead of the cries and clamor of the market, he who has the courage to teach to others what his heart has taught him, will always be original. Sincerity as regards oneself is the well of all brilliance and mankind would be more brilliant if it were simply more moral. And now, here is the practical application I promised you: Take a stack of paper and write. Write everything that goes through your mind for three consecutive days with neither hesitation nor hypocrisy. Write down what you think of yourself, what you think of your wife, what you think of the war with the Turks, what you think of Goethe, of Fonk’s trial, of the Last Judgment, of your superiors. At the end of the three days you will scarce be able to believe what new, unheard-of thoughts have come to you. And that, my friends, is how to become an original writer in just three days!”
Sometimes judgment moves too quickly to develop ideas and it becomes important to allow material to jump forth to the point that associations between the data points can be made. In another example, Friedrich Schiller helped a friend with his creativity struggles. “The ground for your complaint seems to me to lie in the constraint imposed by your reason upon your imagination. I will make my idea more concrete by a simile. It seems a bad thing and detrimental to the creative work of the mind if Reason makes too close an examination of the ideas as they come pouring in—at the very gateway, as it were. Looked at in isolation, a thought may seem very trivial or very fantastic; but it may be made important by another thought that comes after it, and, in conjunction with other thoughts that may seem equally absurd, it may turn out to form a most effective link. Reason cannot form any opinion upon all this unless it retains the thought long enough to look at it in connection with the others. On the other hand, where there is a creative mind, Reason—so it seems to me—relaxes its watch upon the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it look them through and examine them in a mass…You critics, or whatever else you may call yourselves, are ashamed or frightened of the momentary and transient extravagances which are to be found in all truly creative minds and whose longer or shorter duration distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. You complain of your unfruitfulness because you reject too soon and discriminate too severely.”
Before Freud, the controversial polymath Sir Francis Galton, analyzed himself. “This method of free association had been originated by Sir Francis Galton. Galton, like Jung forty years later, used a list of one hundred words and got his subjects (as well as himself) to say the first word that came into their mind, timing their reactions. ‘[The results] gave me an interesting and unexpected view of the number of the operations of the mind and of the obscure depths in which they took place, of which I had been little conscious before. The general impression they have left upon me is that which many of us have experienced when the basement of our house happens to be under thorough sanitary repairs, and we realise for the first time the complex system of drains and gas and water pipes, flues, bell-wires and so forth, upon which our comfort depends, but which are usually hidden out of sight, and with whose existence, as long as they acted well, we had never troubled ourselves…[It] was a most repugnant and laborious work, and it was only by strong self-control that I went through my schedule according to programme.'”
Entering the world of continental philosophy, Husserl saw the danger of taking in cultural judgments so that those abstract limits and languages would inevitably mangle experience. He believed in transcendental subjectivity, “which is the unobserved observer that resides in all our perceptions, feelings, and thoughts…Philosophy is either the description and analysis of language, or, correlatively, that of experience. The phenomenological method is the descriptive analysis of experience. The necessary presupposition, therefore, is that language embodies experiences, that the structure of language is parallel to and representative of experience. The semantic or language-oriented approach assumes the converse to be true: language is logically, ontologically, and genetically prior to experience, and modifies and distorts experience. For the language-oriented method, the function of philosophy is to show the relation between philosophic problems—or ‘puzzles,’’ as these are often called—and both the grammar and function of language…Husserl must be understood to assume that language reflects the structure of experience, or, if it does not, that we can examine experience independently of language. It follows that the analysis of experiences, with all their subtleties, is the presuppositionless beginning of philosophy…The fact that the experiences analyzed are often vague does not diminish their certainty. We can deny neither the existence nor the importance of these experiences…Husserl frequently uses the term ‘transcendental.’ The penultimate premise, therefore, is that transcendental terms are non-contradictory and thus meaningful…The general purpose, which is one that can be realized, of philosophy is to seek for the absolutely presuppositionless. The exploration of the presuppositionless is essential for the foundation of any cognitive discipline whatever, and is the only path to certainty. In fact, ‘to be presuppositionless’ and ‘to be certain’ are synonymous expressions. Consequently, towards the end of his life, Husserl could ironically and yet proudly refer to himself as a person who in his old age ‘teached the perfect certainty that he can call himself a true beginner.’ Husserl’s phenomenological epoché, on the other hand, his notion of bracketing or Einklammerung, consists in adopting a reflective and disengaged attitude towards our experiences. Only through his epoché can experiences be properly described and analyzed…he suspends judgment…In this way Husserl manages to focus solely on the presentational structure of phenomena, that is, on phenomena as these appear prior to any interpretations or beliefs attached to them…Husserl focuses his analysis on experience, not deduction. He wishes to discover and describe the given in experience; he looks for the immediate data of consciousness, pure experience, presentation.”
Heidegger then became hermeneutic after Husserl’s transcendentalism, after being inspired by him, because when one stepped back into epoché, the human experience of Dasein [Being-There] was not presuppositionless, due to the existential nature of the very thing of existence. In Heidegger’s authenticity, you are owning the fact that you are a finite, thrown into an already developed culture, a world-embedded being who must choose between limited options, which brings up all kinds of feelings and judgments that one cannot escape. Internal conflict can already generate from this point as Dasein struggles with the limitations of reality, because one is not truly a nihilist, because one must care about one’s life as one faces mortality, which is also protected from total appropriation by culture. Your death will be your experience. This brings about a sense of wonder of existence, and the way it reveals itself to Dasein in ways that are not completely exhausted by exploitation for our survival. At whatever stage of technology, and it’s use for our consumption, wonder is what allows for new meanings to be generated as new ways of being open up. If Truth hasn’t been exhausted, because we keep learning more and more about the universe, then we cannot ground our truths as absolute or ultimate truths with the current formulations or dogmas. The difficulty with goal-orientation is that, although practical and useful, it can reduce a person to an automaton who merely executes procedures in a totalitarian way. A cultivated sense of wonder—not in the sense of novelty-seeking, but the wonder that anything appears to us at all—opens space for seeing how these procedures may be rethought, transformed, or connected in more socially cohesive ways. Wonder allows goals to not always be isolated tasks and instead become part of a more meaningful whole. This meditative form of thinking breaks the grip of programmatic, calculative thinking that often stifles genuine creativity and the emergence of new beginnings.
Self-analysis
Entering in the mid-20th century, Karen Horney was straddling the uncovering of unconscious material in a non-judgmental way, while still having to later on help the patient come to their own moral conclusions and existential choices about those contents. The goal was to reduce internal conflict and become more authentic, while balancing emotional release with reason. Not an easy task. Dreams and Free Association were two sides of the same coin for her. They revealed the internal conflicts that powerfully influenced, but were under the radar of the ego. When things are difficult and challenging, many find it hard to get a good night’s sleep or ruminate during the day, which is an obvious evidence of the power of the unconscious. Since internal conflict is the trauma, then therapy would be to undo these knots. “Dreams, in other words, give voice to our strivings, our needs, and often represent attempts at a solution of conflicts bothering us at the time. They are a play of emotional forces rather than a statement of facts. If two powerful contradictory strivings clash, an anxiety dream may result.”
Many interpretations are subjective, and to get behind any of them, like with Freud, Karen wanted to analyze what these distortions were and trace them back to their true intentions underneath. “The validity of an interpretation is judged by the effect it has on the patient. If the latter presents confirmatory evidence which opens new avenues for discussion or work, it is felt that the interpretation was valid. Sometimes the explanation confirms or clarifies previous interpretations. A second criterion is found in the symbolism. One should ask oneself, ‘Does the explanation of the symbol coincide with the emotions operating in the patient?’ and ‘Is there evidence that the symbol expresses exactly that which goes on in the patient?’ A third criterion is whether or not one can establish a connection between the conflict in the patient and the solutions he uses in the dream. We should speak of plausibility of dream interpretations rather than of validity.”
Her addition behind wish fulfillment as being the sole fuel of dreams was to see what worldview and threat to self-esteem was animating these contents. Since the patient is still alive, the attitudes in the dream involve some element of conflict and defense that is a sketch of a possible solution to the said conflicts. There’s an interest and a goal involved, or a teleological motive, as opposed to a reflection of the current emotional state. “Thus if we dream of a person whom we consciously like or respect as a revolting or ridiculous creature we should look for a need that compels us to deflate that person rather than jumping to the conclusion that the dream reveals our hidden opinion of him. If a patient dreams of himself as a dilapidated house that is beyond repair, this may, to be sure, be an expression of his hopelessness, but the main question is what interest he has in presenting himself in this way. Is this defeatist attitude desirable for him as the lesser evil? Is it the expression of a vindictive reproach, at his own expense, revealing his feeling that something should have been done for him earlier but that now it is too late? The second principle to be mentioned here is that a dream is not understood until we can connect it with the actual provocation that stimulated it. It is not enough, for instance, to recognize in a dream derogatory tendencies or vindictive impulses in general. The question must always be raised as to the provocation to which this dream was a response. If this connection can be discovered we can learn a good deal as to the exact type of experience that represents to us a threat or an offense, and the unconscious reactions it elicits.”
Mining the truth behind one’s defenses is different because it allows one to look deeper into what might be hidden behind knee-jerk reactions or fake displays of emotions that make up a character disorder. “He is likely to attempt a frontal attack on the disturbance as such and set out on something of a blitzkrieg. In other words, he may try to get at the unconscious determinants of his predicament without knowing much of anything about his personality structure. The result, at best, will be that some sensible questions will occur to his mind. If his particular disturbance is an inhibition toward work, for example, he may ask himself whether he is too ambitious, whether he is really interested in the work he does, whether he regards the work as a duty and secretly rebels against it. He will soon get stuck and resolve that analysis does not help at all. But here the fault is his and cannot be put at the doorstep of psychoanalysis. A blitzkrieg is never a good method in psychological matters, but a blitzkrieg that is entirely unprepared is bad for any purpose. This would be one that has neglected any previous reconnoitering of the territory to be attacked. It is partly because ignorance in psychological matters is still so great and so widespread that anyone could even attempt such a dead-end short cut. Here is a human being with infinitely complex crosscurrents of strivings, fears, defenses, illusions; his incapacity to concentrate on work is one end result of the entirety of these factors. And he believes he can eradicate it by direct action, as simply as he switches off an electric light! To some extent this expectation is based on wishful thinking: he would like to remove quickly the disability that disturbs him; and he likes to think that apart from this outstanding disturbance everything is all right. He does not like to face the fact that an overt difficulty is merely an indication that something is basically wrong with his relation to himself and to others…He must know himself very well before he can glimpse the nature of his concrete handicap. As he proceeds in the accumulation of this knowledge he will gradually assemble the elements involved in the disturbance, if he is alert to the implications of his findings.”
Analysis is a meditation that can catch little movements of mind that are in error, grasping at straws, and moving in ways that the conscious ego disapproves of. Those little movements are gold if one is willing to learn more about unconscious processes. “…Most people know very little about themselves, and only gradually learn to what extent they have lived in ignorance. You will then be astonished to see that here you are irritated for no apparent reason, there you cannot make up your mind, here you were offensive without meaning to be, here you mysteriously lost your appetite, there you had an eating spell, here you could not bring yourself to answer a letter, there you were suddenly afraid of noises around you when alone, here you had a nightmare, there you felt hurt or humiliated, here you could not ask for a raise in salary or express a critical opinion. All these infinite observations represent that many entrances to the unfamiliar ground that is yourself. You start to wonder—which here, too, is the beginning of all wisdom—and by means of free association you try to understand the meaning of these emotional upsets.”
Sometimes there’s not enough unconscious material coming up because life is a going concern for the mind and conscious activities are more important. It’s when things are indecisive and mysterious, where one feels the need to read the tea leaves, that bubbles up the intensity of content and material. “…There will be periods in which he works intensely at a problem. But there will be other periods in which the analytical work at himself recedes into the background. He will still observe one or another striking reaction and try to understand it, thus continuing the process of self-recognition, but in distinctly diminished intensity. He may be absorbed in personal work or in group activities; he may be engaged in a battle with external hardships; he may be concentrated on establishing one or another relationship; he may simply feel less harassed by his psychic troubles. At these times the mere process of living is more important than analysis, and it contributes in its own way to his development.”
Collecting material can be a difficulty when associations need to continue unimpeded. Where does one stop and where does one start again? “…In working alone he begins by merely taking note of his associations. Whether he only notes them mentally or writes them down is a matter of individual preference. Some people can concentrate better when they write; others find their attention distracted by writing…There are undoubtedly certain advantages in writing down one’s associations. For one thing, almost everyone will find that his thoughts do not wander off on a tangent so easily if he makes it a rule to put down a short note, a catchword, of every association. At any rate he will notice the wandering more quickly. It may be, too, that the temptation to skip a thought or feeling as irrelevant is lessened when it is all down on paper. But the greatest advantage of writing is that it affords the possibility of going over the notes afterward. Frequently a person will miss the significance of a connection at first sight, but will notice it later when he lets his mind dwell on his notes. Findings or unanswered questions that are not well entrenched are often forgotten, and a return to them may revive them. Or he may see the old findings in a different light. Or he may discover that he has made no noticeable headway, but is essentially still at the same point where he was several months ago. These two latter reasons make it advisable to jot down findings, and the main paths leading up to them, even though they may have been arrived at without taking notes. The main difficulty in writing, the fact that thoughts are quicker than the pen, can be remedied by putting down only catchwords.”
A major difficulty in notes is keeping it secret from family and friends. Because culture is judgmental and critical of this kind of introspection, they assume that all content will be acted upon and that the person is an out of control moral hazard to the community. Many people have perverted desires, violent thoughts, envy and schadenfreude that would be inappropriate to act on, and bystanders can easily fall into thought crime denunciations. The fear of disclosure can affect how the notes are gathered and obscure the lower animal impulses and thoughts. The demonic and the impatient are better controlled with acceptance of their presence than pretending to be an angel, and we all know those so called “spiritual” types that wall off the unconscious and “blitzkrieg” toward their ideal selves only to have hypocritical unconscious impulses sneak into action and humiliate the “perfect angel,” who somehow has enough energy to give spiritual advice to others. Focusing on oneself first is a good rule of thumb. “…A diary often glances with one eye toward a future reader, whether that reader be the writer at a future time or a wider audience. Any such side glance at posterity, however, inevitably detracts from pristine honesty. Deliberately or inadvertently the writer is bound, then, to do some retouching. He will omit certain factors entirely, minimize his shortcomings or blame them on others, protect other people from exposure. The same will happen when he writes down his associations if he takes the least squint at an admiring audience or at the idea of creating a masterpiece of unique value. He will then commit all those sins that undermine the value of free associations. Whatever he sets down on paper should serve one purpose only, that of recognizing himself.”
Patients, whether they are analyzed by a psychoanalyst or analyze themselves, they need truth to be able to learn and then see the consequences of their baser nature, and send that impulse-energy towards growth and skill development, rather than wasting it on demanding the environment change for them, which often falls on deaf ears. Sometimes people are attracting the wrong attention and their new skills make the environment begin to adjust because they are repelling older attractions and creating new ones. “The analysis of the repressed aggressive trends contributed in turn to a still better understanding of the dependency. Also, by rendering her more assertive, it removed any danger that might still have existed that she would ever relapse into another morbidly dependent relationship. But the power exercised on her by her need to merge with a partner was essentially broken by the analytical work that she had done alone…As we have seen, the process of free association, of frank and unreserved self-expression, is the starting point and continuous basis of all analytic work…”
Spirit and Rules
For people who have had a lifelong struggle to be truthful to themselves and rigid habits of being like a performing actor wearing a costume, being mindful of all the ego’s reactions of disgust or disapproval, to the sincerely blunt content arising, will immediately illuminate to him or her as to why the self-censorship happened in the first place. “This conscientiousness is particularly important in regard to the expression of feelings. Here there are two precepts that should be remembered. One is that the person should try to express what he really feels and not what he is supposed to feel according to tradition or his own standards. He should at least be aware that there may be a wide and significant chasm between genuine feelings and feelings artificially adopted, and should sometimes ask himself—not while associating, but afterward—what he really feels about the matter. The other rule is that he should give as free range to his feelings as he possibly can. This, too, is more easily said than done. It may appear ridiculous to feel deeply hurt at a seemingly trivial offense. It may be bewildering and distasteful to mistrust or hate somebody he is close to. He may be willing to admit a ripple of irritation, but find it frightening to let himself feel the rage that is actually there. He must remember, however, that as far as outside consequences are concerned no situation is less dangerous than analysis for a true expression of feelings. In analysis only the inner consequence matters, and this is to recognize the full intensity of a feeling. This is important because in psychological matters, too, we cannot hang anybody whom we have not first caught.”
There Will Be Blood – I ABANDONED MY CHILD!: https://youtu.be/O-xjW_ig1KI?si=hYE4MsZ0LaE6WF7e
It’s the forcing attitude of the ego, the pressure of muscles tightening in the body, especially in the face, head and neck, that crushes the free association time and again. “Of course, no one can forcibly bring forth feelings that are repressed. All anyone can do is not to check those that are within reach…It is essential to abstain from reasoning while associating. Reason has its place in analysis, and there is ample opportunity to use it—afterward. But, as already stressed, the very essence of free association is spontaneity. Hence the person who is attempting it should not try to arrive at a solution by figuring out. Assume, for instance, that you feel so fatigued and so limp that you would like to crawl into bed and pronounce yourself ill. You look out of a second-story window and detect yourself thinking miserably that if you fell down you would at most break an arm. This startles you. You had not known that you were desperate, even so desperate as to want to die. Then you hear a radio turned on above you, and you think with moderate irritation that you would like to shoot the fellow operating it. You conclude rightly that there must be rage as well as despair behind your feeling ill. So far you have done a good job. You already feel less paralyzed, because if you are furious at something you may be able to find the reasons for it. But now you start a frantic conscious search for what might have infuriated you. You go over all the incidents that occurred before you felt so tired. It is possible that you will hit upon the provocation, but the probability is that all your conscious digging comes to nought—and that the real source will occur to you half an hour later, after you have become discouraged by the futility of your attempts and have given up the conscious search…The two processes—self-expression and understanding—may sometimes coincide. But as far as conscious efforts are concerned they should be kept strictly separate.”
If there is a rule, it is that one should collect enough material so as to have the majority of puzzle pieces to sift through later. When putting together a puzzle, one must have enough pieces to make a recognizable image. “If a definite distinction is thus established between freely associating and understanding, when does one stop associating and try to understand? Fortunately there are no rules whatever. As long as thoughts flow freely there is no sense in arresting them artificially. Sooner or later they will be stopped by something stronger than themselves. Perhaps the person arrives at a point where he feels curious about what it all may mean. Or he may suddenly strike an emotional chord that promises to shed light on something that is troubling him. Or he may simply run out of thoughts, which may be a sign of resistance but also may indicate that he has exhausted the subject for the time being. Or he may have only a limited time at his disposal and still want to try himself at interpreting his notes.”
Much of what Freud added to dream analysis could be accepted, in terms of wish fulfillment, but each new analyst can add more dimensions to the interpretations in the hopes to avoid new artificial suppressions in the form of false narratives. For Karen, she wanted to know what the patient needed to face in their lives and what they were running away from, as opposed to just making unconscious contents of the past become conscious and to generate catharsis reactions. “As for the understanding of associations, the range of themes and combinations of themes that they may present is so infinite that there cannot possibly be any fixed rules regarding the meaning of individual elements in individual contexts.”
When you collect enough puzzle pieces and examine the consequences of these character problems, the unconscious contents that burst forth can connect with the consequences in a way that becomes unmistakable. Analysis of the content involves “recognizing a neurotic trend; understanding its implications; and discovering its interrelations with other neurotic trends…” The therapy “did not deliberately set out to discover a neurotic trend, and did not deliberately examine the connections. The recognition of the trend came of itself; and, similarly, the connecting links between trends almost automatically became more and more visible as the analytical work proceeded.”
Like with Freud, some issues are day to day ones that need more practical responses and solutions for the patient. Not all contents are long-term in their effects and oceanic in their depth. Interpretations do not have to be fancy, or creatively original. They just have to resonate with why the patient wants to continue with the same failed character structure, and discover the wounded self that is being protected. “Any number of daily experiences will encroach upon his thinking, some of them perhaps eliciting emotional responses that call for immediate clarification. All anyone can do in such circumstances is to take these interruptions in his stride and to deal with the problems arising as best he can. He may just as well, however, have experiences that help him with the problem at hand…What really matters is not an enigmatic artistic endowment but a strictly definable factor—which is one’s interest or incentive.”
Dealing with Resistance
Instead of resistances being treated as only a block on insight, they can be used alternatively as a launching pad for more questions and investigations to delve further. Like an onion, the first interpretations may be replaced by deeper ones that explain more. These painful moments that bring up hatred for the therapist are moments when wounds are exposed as well as other humiliating contents. “One of the most important reasons why he may not recognize the presence of a resistance is the fact that defensive processes are set in motion not only when he is directly confronted with the problems involved, that is, when his secret claims on life are laid bare, his illusions questioned, his security measures jeopardized, but also when he remotely approaches these domains. The more intent he is on keeping them intact, the more sensitive he is to an approach even from the far distance. He is like a person who is frightened by thunderstorms and who is not only terrified by thunder and lightning but reacts with apprehension even to a cloud that appears on the far horizon. These long-distance reactions escape attention so easily because they arise with the emergence of a subject that is apparently innocuous, one that does not seem likely to stir up strong feelings of any kind.”
Resistance to change points literally to the change that someone wants to avoid when it comes to Karen’s theories about basic anxiety fueling a need for a defense that provides some result, but is also unfortunately a limiting factor if one wants to enjoy a full life. “The sources of resistance are the sum total of a person’s interests in maintaining the status quo. These interests are not—and emphatically not—identical with a wish to remain ill. Everyone wants to get rid of handicaps and suffering, and in that wish he is all for change, and for a quick change at that. What he wants to maintain is not ‘the neurosis’ but those aspects of it which have proved to be of immense subjective value to him and which in his mind hold the promise of future security and gratification. The basic factors that no one wants to modify one iota are, briefly, those that concern his secret claims on life, his claims for ‘love,’ for power, for independence and the like, his illusions about himself, the safety zones within which he moves with comparative ease. The exact nature of these factors depends on the nature of his neurotic trends.”
Resistances can be of a secondary nature that hint at the basic anxiety and primary defenses that are soothing, but limit growth. “In professional analysis the provocation for resistance is, in the great majority of cases, something that has occurred in the analysis itself. If strong secondary defenses have developed, [they] arise as soon as the analyst questions the validity of these defenses, that is, as soon as he casts any doubt on the rightness, goodness, or unalterability of any factor in the patient’s personality. Thus a patient whose secondary defenses consist in regarding everything concerning himself, faults included, as excellent and unique will develop a feeling of hopelessness as soon as any motivation of his is questioned. Another patient will react with a mixture of irritability and discouragement as soon as he encounters, or the analyst points out to him, any trace of irrationality within himself. It is in accordance with the function of secondary defenses—protection of the whole system developed—that these defensive reactions are elicited not merely when a special repressed factor is in danger of being uncovered but when anything is questioned, regardless of content.”
Questioning also comes from unintended modeling demonstrated by authority figures or people deemed to have their life more together than the patient perceives him or herself to be. They feel slighted by any displays of competence. “As soon as any domain is approached, closely or remotely, which is taboo for the particular patient he will react emotionally with fear or anger and will automatically set going a defensive action in order to prevent further trespassing. This encroachment on a taboo need not be a specific attack but may result merely from the analyst’s general behavior. Anything he does or fails to do, says or fails to say, may hurt one of the patient’s vulnerable spots and create a conscious or unconscious resentment which for the time being blocks the co-operative work.”
In Karen Horney and Character Disorder, Solomon clarified what the character types may be by the different defenses that arise. “The aggressive character structure will most likely not appreciate any interpretation that exposes a hint of weakness, a need for intimacy, or possible hopelessness. Despair would represent a defeatist self-pity. The compliant character disorder does not welcome any recognition of vindictiveness or desire for power.” One can imagine a person who has the character of moving away from people would not want to approach any desires that move the patient out of their comfort zone to develop people skills that satisfy needs while having appropriate boundaries, which is a form of advocating for oneself, or some call it simply fighting for oneself. There’s an impasse until consequences of these compromised solutions are finally shown to be pathological. “A rigid idealized self-image coupled with externalization resists interpretations, but knowledge of the patient’s pseudo-solutions can give the therapist clues to various not-so-obvious aspects of the patient’s character disorder. Therapeutic intuition and sensitivity is, of course, indispensable. How the patient reacts to an interpretation tells us when the patient is repeatedly able to work on and through a problem.”
Anything that stifles growth provides the angle with which to see where the patient has impaired themselves. Allowing content to arise over longer periods of time can help unearth those areas that have not been recognized yet. Impulses that are undeveloped and archaic do not have to be feared, if one has enough control to not act on them, but the moral compass comes from seeing those impulses as energy that can be harnessed for skill development, so that morality is not neglected and can be a partner in therapy. “…No one can do anything about those that are unnoticeable, because the first and uppermost requirement is to recognize that a resistance operates. Most resistances can be overlooked, particularly since as a rule one is not too keen to see them. But there are certain forms that are bound to escape attention, no matter how alert one is, or how intent on getting on. The foremost among these are the blind spots and the minimizing of feelings…Blind spots will often clear up in time if the work is carried on…Almost the same holds true for a search in a wrong direction. A resistance that expresses itself in this form is also difficult to detect, and it will cause a loss of time. But its presence may be suspected if one finds after a while that no progress has been made, or that one is only moving in circles in spite of having worked at the problems concerned.”
At other times, the interruption of free association is obvious and provides puzzle pieces with relative ease. This often manifests in a lack of trust in oneself to utilize a learning mentality that can drop mistakes and make efforts to improve. Endless loops of negative self-talk tearing down the ego or desires for escape may appear, but they all have the same pattern of blocking growth. “The other kinds of resistance are more easily noticed—with due allowance for the fact that they may be of a forbidding intensity. A person can certainly notice his resistance to starting work, if the situation is as described above. In the process of association he can become aware that he is figuring out instead of thinking spontaneously; he can notice that his thoughts are wandering off, and then either retrospectively recall their sequence or at least retrieve the point at which they wandered off. He can catch himself on fallacious reasoning if he goes over his notes on another day, as [a patient] did in connection with her expectations of magic help. He can suspect that something is blocking progress if he finds that with conspicuous regularity his findings are highly complimentary, or highly uncomplimentary, to himself. He can even suspect that a reaction of discouragement is a form of resistance, though this is difficult if he is in the clutches of such a feeling; what he should do here is to regard the discouragement itself as a reaction to the analysis, instead of taking it at its face value…When he has become aware of an existing blockage he should drop whatever analytical pursuits he is engaged in and take the resistance as the most urgent problem to be tackled. It is as useless to force himself to go on against the resistance as it would be, to use Freud’s illustration, to try again and again to light an electric bulb that does not burn; one has to see where the electric current is blocked, whether in the bulb, in the fixture, in the cord, in the switch.”
Content blockages can also provide launching points for further associations. These associations are likely to be painful and slow to emerge. The patient may need time before they can accept that they see an area that they would like to grow in skill, but weak areas are likely to be sore, tender, and child-like in their low levels of skill. There may be months or years of skill development required to catch up to those judgmental people who are already good at these things. Just start with a key word related to the blockage and continue recording the first thing that is thought afterwards. “The technique of tackling a resistance is to try to associate to it. But in all resistances occurring during analytical work it is helpful, before associating, to go over the notes that precede the blockage, because there is a fair chance that the clue for it lies in an issue at least touched upon, and that while glancing over the notes the point of departure may become evident. And sometimes a person will not be capable of going after a resistance immediately: he may be too reluctant or feel too uneasy to do so. It is advisable then, instead of forcing himself, merely to make a note that at this or that point he suddenly felt uneasy or tired, and to resume work the next day when he may have a fresh perspective on matters…I mean that he should consider the particular manifestation of the blockage and let his thoughts run freely along that line. Thus if he has noticed that no matter what problems are concerned his interpretations always make him come out on top he should try to take that finding as a point of departure for further associations. If he has become discouraged at a finding he should remember that the latter may have touched upon factors that he is not yet able or willing to change, and try to associate with that possibility in mind. If his difficulty is in starting to analyze, though he feels a need for self-examination, he should remind himself that a previous piece of analysis or some outside occurrence may have produced a blockage.”
Outside factors can be real, but to discern correctly what is a more objective attitude compared to what is solely subjective, there has to be enough evidence to provide guidance as to what is an uncontrollable external factor that deserves blame, as opposed to a skill that the patient can acquire to provide newly rewarding access to growth. That’s the change in attitude. Instead of forcing the environment to change all the time, with demands and externalizations, the patient can start instead with skill development to see how far things can progress on that path. “A person who is in the grip of neurotic trends—or for that matter almost any person—is quite likely to feel offended or unfairly dealt with by a special individual, or by life in general, and to take at face value his reaction of hurt or resentment. In such situations it takes a considerable degree of clarity to distinguish between a real and an imagined offense. And even if the offense is real it need not necessarily produce such reactions: if he is not himself vulnerable to what others may do to him there are many offenses to which he may respond with pity or disapproval of the offender, perhaps with open battle, rather than with hurt or resentment. It is much easier merely to feel a right to be angry than to examine exactly what vulnerable spot in himself has been hit. But for his own interests this is the way he should proceed, even if there is no doubt that the other has been cruel, unfair, or inconsiderate.”
Super-ego attacks on areas of weakness are another stumbling block that treat the patient as someone with an identity that cannot develop, which is a destructive power. The constructive power has to be strong enough to influence constructive attitudes and actions. Naturally those behaviours lead to growth. “We are easily tempted to be annoyed at ourselves for having a resistance. Such an attitude is understandable because it is annoying or even exasperating to encounter self-made obstacles on our way to a goal that we desire in our best interests. Nevertheless there is no justification or even any meaning in a person scolding himself for his resistances. The neurotic trends that try to protect have given him means of dealing with life when all other means have failed. It is more sensible for him to regard the opposing forces as given factors. I am almost inclined to say that he should respect them as a part of himself—respect them not in the sense of giving them approval and indulgence but in the sense of acknowledging them as organic developments. Such an attitude will not only be more just to himself but will also give him a much better basis for dealing with resistances…If resistances are tackled in the way and in the spirit indicated, there is a good chance that they may be understood and overcome—provided they are no stronger than one’s constructive will. Those that are stronger present difficulties that can at best be overcome only with expert help.”
Free association can be like a vipassana noting meditation, but where it departs from Buddhism is the facing of the implications of that content, as opposed to repeatedly letting go of it. For those afraid of the contents coming out that are violent, perverted, envious, and just plain evil, it’s the same as in any analytical situation. You don’t act out on anything. This is more explicit in Carl Jung, but it’s all over psychology, including the early stuff. The goal is integration through development that’s socially acceptable. Evil content is a sign of a lack of skill in psychology. Guardrails, just like debates about the role of artificial intelligence today, are applied by growing skill, which Karen simply called aliveness and reason, so that the impulse is treated as an inner child crying out for development, instead of a demon identity of shame. A true psychopath is an impulse machine with no control or guardrails, so therapy can never normalize that point of view. Even just an awareness that there’s an undeveloped weak impulse repeatedly coming up is enough knowledge, where letting go is now an option, until an environment is made available so that development can start. It’s also a way to mirror empathy for oneself to regulate the emotion into relaxation. After a certain age, and if windows of opportunity for development have already passed, there’s solace in accepting one’s situation.
Mindfulness: Nirvana: https://rumble.com/v1grcgx-mindfulness-nirvana.html
Intentional Breathing – Thanissaro Bhikkhu: https://www.dhammatalks.org/audio/morning/2019/190618-intentional-breathing.html
Stalking: World Narcissistic Abuse Awareness Day: https://rumble.com/v1gvhk1-stalking-world-narcissistic-abuse-awareness-day.html
Spiritual Bypassing and Inner Bonding: https://rumble.com/v1gpm57-spiritual-bypassing-and-inner-bonding.html
Limitations of Self-Analysis
Self-analysis is limited by the power of the neurotic trends and how strong the automatic reactions are, to control behaviour and prevent growth, even after analysis has uncovered a lot of the matter. Therapy helps to reduce internal contradictions, but no person, no matter how healthy, is perfectly decisive and discerning in their affairs. The environment is also imperfect and what culture you live in at any time is consequential when it comes to how much a human can develop. “…No human being is ever reduced to a streamlined machine driving in one direction. But this concentration may be approximated. And external conditions must be of a kind to allow such a development. The comparative importance of external and internal conditions varies infinitely. In our society a man who is financially independent can easily withdraw into his ivory tower; but a person with scant resources can also withdraw from the world, if he restricts his other needs to a minimum. One person has grown up in an environment that allows him a display of prestige or power, but another, though he started with nothing, makes such a relentless use of external circumstances that in the end he attains the same goal.”
Karen hints at responsibility and growth as being the alive centre of the person. Old habits really slow down development and creating growth habits takes considerable time. “What I mean here is perhaps best indicated by William James’s concept of the ‘real self’ as distinguished from the material and social self. In simple terms it concerns what I really feel, what I really want, what I really believe, what I really decide. It is, or should be, the most alive center of psychic life. It is this psychic center to which the appeal is made in analytical work. In every neurosis its scope and its aliveness are decreased, for genuine self-regard, native dignity, initiative, the capacity to take responsibility for one’s life, and like factors that account for the development of self have always been battered. Moreover, the neurotic trends themselves have usurped a great deal of its energies because—to resume an analogy previously used—they turn a person into an airplane driven by remote control.”
This is a conscious attitude to maximize activities for growth and to advocate for oneself in an unapologetic way, because this self-care is reasonable and expected in a free world, even if it’s only partially free and quite unfair at times. If you wait for others to pick up the slack, you’ll wait forever. It’s better to use trial and error and see how far a person can go. “First, I (and nobody else) am responsible for my life, for my growth as a human being, for the development of whatever talents I have. It is of no use to imagine that others keep me down. If they actually do, it is up to me to fight them…I (and nobody else) am responsible for what I think, feel, say, do, decide. It is weak to blame others, and it makes me weaker. It is useless to blame others, because I (and nobody else) have to bear the consequences of my being and my doing. It is harmful to shirk responsibility, because I deprive myself of the possibility of growing as a human being. And I can grow only if I realize my difficulties, learn from them, and eventually overcome them.” One is free to ask “what is the matter with me that keeps me from outgrowing these early injuries?”
We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good and just abandon human agency in the world. Through trial and error we can test the environment for what is truly an external block. “We do not die from neurosis, but it makes us weak and it robs us of the possibility of overcoming our egocentricity, of assuming responsibility for ourselves, and with that the possibility of becoming mature and bringing order into a chaotic world…If the real self is considerably damaged the person has lost his own center of gravity and is directed by other forces, from within or from without. He may overadapt himself to his environment and become an automaton. He may find his only right to existence in being helpful to others, and thus be socially useful though his lack of any center of gravity within himself is bound to hamper his efficiency. He may lose all inner sense of direction, and either drift aimlessly or be entirely directed by a neurotic trend. His feelings, thoughts, and actions may be almost entirely determined by an inflated image which he has built up of himself: he will be sympathetic not because he really feels it, but because to be sympathetic is part of his image; he will have particular ‘friends’ or ‘interests’ because those friends or interests are required by his image…If the whole neurosis is safeguarded by rigid convictions that everything is right, good, or unalterable, there can hardly be an incentive to change anything…His chances for constructive self-analysis depend largely on the relative strength of ‘I can’ and ‘I can’t’ or ‘I will’ and ‘I won’t.'”
Actions speak louder than words in Karen’s psychology, and through action a person can see what they can accomplish on their own and truly discover where they may finally need the help of others. Eventually a set of values can develop based on feedback coming from reality and truth. “…It is ultimately a matter of our personal philosophy of life how highly we value a constructive dissatisfaction with ourselves that drives us on toward further growth and development. It is desirable, however, that we be or become clear as to what exactly are our sets of values, and act accordingly.”
Even Karen had to be realistic about her therapy in that each patient has limited energy and not everyone would be married in an idealistic family situation living a full life with an interesting career and loving relationships. They will have to accept a healthier version of their neurosis instead. “Life itself may be instrumental in bringing about such solutions. He may be thrown into a situation that provides an outlet for a craving for power, or permits a life of obscurity and subordination in which he need not assert himself. He may seize the possibility of a marriage to solve his urge for dependency. Or he may more or less consciously decide that his difficulties in human relationships—some of which he has recognized and understood—are too great a drain on his energies, and that the only way to live a peaceful life or to save his creative abilities is to withdraw from others; he may then restrict to a minimum his need for people or for material things, and under these conditions be able to work out a tolerable existence. These solutions are not ideal, to be sure, but a psychic equilibrium may be reached on a better level than before. And in some circumstances of very severe entanglements such pseudo solutions may be the most that can be attained.”
At some point, a self-analysis may hit a limitation because two heads are better than one. Others may see solutions that the patient cannot see on their own, like someone looking for help from a consultant that has special experience regarding a particular matter. “In many instances an analyst can liberate constructive forces by showing the patient concrete problems accessible to a solution, whereas if the patient were working alone, and felt blindly caught in invisible and apparently inextricable entanglements, he could not possibly pick up enough courage to grapple with his problems.”
Progress can be celebrated in small stages during sessions of analysis, but ultimately, no human can exhaust all the possibilities of a normal lifespan and attain some imaginary final celebration. There will be a point where the patient can proceed on their own, and see how far his or her real self can proceed, but life always ends with something unfinished. “Every step that leads him closer to his real self and closer to others renders him less hopeless and less isolated and thereby adds to his active interest in life, including also his interest in his own development. Therefore after a period of common work with an analyst even patients who started with severe neurotic difficulties may in some cases be able to continue on their own, if necessary…There is no such thing as a complete analysis. The idea of a finished human product not only appears presumptuous but even, in my opinion, lacks any strong appeal. Life is struggle and striving, development and growth—and analysis is one of the means that can help in this process. Certainly its positive accomplishments are important, but also the striving itself is of intrinsic value. As Goethe has said in Faust:
Whoe’er aspires unweariedly,
Is not beyond redeeming.
Self-Analysis – Karen Horney: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780393311655/
The Unknown Karen Horney – Karen Horney, Bernard J. Paris: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780300080421/
Karen Horney and Character Disorder – Irving Solomon PhD: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780826129956/
Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession – Janet Malcolm: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780394710341/
How to Become an Original Writer in Three Days – Ludwig Börne: https://www1.cmc.edu/pages/faculty/ldeladurantaye/art_of_ignorance_harvard_review.pdf
Decline And Fall Of The Freudian Empire – Hans Jurgen Eysenck: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780140225624/
Eight Logismoi in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus – Leszek Misiarczyk: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9782503594941/
Horváth, G. Louis Komjathy: Daoist Meditation: Theory, Method, Application.
Moral Transformation in Greco-Roman Philosophy of Mind. Mapping the Moral Milieu of the Apostle Paul and his Diaspora Jewish Contemporaries – Max J. Lee: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9783161496608/
The Essays – Michel De Montaigne: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781313980265/
Being and Time – Martin Heidegger: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781438432762/
“Heidegger and Wonder,” in Springer Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Edited by Micheal A. Peters (New Delhi: Springer, 2017).
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/