Freud described it as such: "The importance of free association is that the patients spoke for themselves, rather than repeating the ideas of the analyst; they work through their own material, rather than parroting another's suggestions".
[2] Freud developed the technique as an alternative to hypnosis, because he perceived the latter as subjected to more fallibility, and because patients could recover and comprehend crucial memories while fully conscious.
The new technique was also encouraged by his experiences with "Miss Elisabeth", one of his early clients who protested against interruptions of her flow of thought, that was described by his official biographer Ernest Jones as "one of the countless examples of a patient's furthering the physician's work".
[3] "There can be no exact date for the discovery of the 'free association' method... it developed very gradually between 1892 and 1895, becoming steadily refined and purified from the adjutants - hypnosis, suggestion, pressing, and questioning - that accompanied it at its inception".
[9] Freud called free association "this fundamental technical rule of analysis... We instruct the patient to put himself into a state of quiet, unreflecting self-observation, and to report to us whatever internal observations he is able to make" - taking care not to "exclude any of them, whether on the ground that it is too disagreeable or too indiscreet to say, or that it is too unimportant or irrelevant, or that it is nonsensical and need not be said".
[13] The goal of free association is not to unearth specific answers or memories, but to instigate a journey of co-discovery which can enhance the patient's integration of thought, feeling, agency, and selfhood.
[17] Jung and his Zurich colleagues 'devised some ingenious association tests which confirmed Freud's conclusions about the way in which emotional factors may interfere with recollection':[18] they were published in 1906.
Robert Langs helped to bring Freud's earliest work back to the forefront, which depended on free association and insight rather than decoding by the psychotherapist.
[26] Adam Phillips suggests that 'the radical nature of Freud's project is clear if one imagines what it would be like to live in a world in which everyone was able - had the capacity - to free-associate, to say whatever came into their mind at any given moment...like a collage'.