Free Associating in Light of New Discoveries

The mentally ill are human beings walking amidst an already diverse world of other kinds

of abnormal human beings, still with life and possibly with some hidden strengths.

The above is my definition of anyone struggling with mental health based on the past fifty years of research in psychology. The incrementally inclined positive psychologist in me possibly influences some of description above. However, not without reason. I err in the direction of a more inclusive definition of people struggling with mental health else their chances of being near levels of normal functioning may never happen.

For a long time in psychology, a prescriptive approach was preferred in dealing with mental health issues. Basically, just like any other illness, anyone struggling with mental health issues were handled similarly. They were diagnosed and then given a one-time course of treatment which either made them better or worse.

When I first became a student of psychology, just as many, I was introduced to some historically original ideas for understanding the human mind, one of which was Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams written in 1900. Freud had found the conscious, unconscious, and all possible levels of the non-conscious -- basically summarized as the visible and the invisible forms of awareness. Dreams gave us our first insights and hope for possible constructive change to mend our personalities. However, the missing piece that haunted Freud until the end was the empirical explanation for these various spaces of awareness. Today, however, we have made some strides in neuroscience, emotion and motivation research, and our understanding of the cognitive conscious. In an imaginary intellectual space of meeting, today Freud would have been delighted to learn about a few discoveries that resonate with his initial inklings. I will attempt to note a few of these findings.

1. Emotional suppression isn't good for long-term well-being (Cameron & Overall, 2018 , Gross & Thompson, 2007, and others)

2. Activation-Synthesis Theory of Dreams alludes to how motivational and emotionally significant themes get randomly revealed in the form of dreams (Wamsley & Antrobus, 2006)

3. Conscious and non-conscious processes influence each other seamlessly, sometimes making the spaces outside awareness particularly more revelatory about the person's priorities, in decision-making and emotionally (Lane & Smith, 2021; Wegner et al., 1987).

4. Findings from research dealing with dissociation of consciousness, exemplified in abiding to instructions while in states of dreaming and hypnosis, show greater expression of emotionally and motivationally relevant themes once the person is socially and consciously not responsible for their behavior. One clear reason? In these states, the executive control system operates separately from other brain systems. Put plainly, once we don't have to respond and operate in a social setting, the more instinctive expressions of our minds find a space for expression once conscious awareness is at rest.

5. Today we have a better understanding of the different levels of emotional appraisals when coping with stress (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). How does this relate with what Freud was stating? Well, in essence, we now know that an initial survival-based response is open for revision when other social and emotionally relevant information is introduced. In Freud's world, realizations over time, once therapy is introduced, or when other bizarre interpretations of events are allowed to find a way to consciousness which can then be corrected or better understood.

   
   

   Free Association, one of Freud's most central therapeutic techniques, is when the person seeking help freely express their initial thoughts and feelings with any inhibitions. In mental health, this matters today in a new way given our better understanding of the variously aware mind. What we express without inhibition is often an initial indication of unaddressed discomforts, which can then be healed or answered.

   
   

   In all, asking questions never harms. Because when Freud asked some very strange questions for his time, people either agreed or disagreed, his ideas evolved, were adopted in new ways, many new theories emerged, and people responded empirically to answer what they also thought and felt was important.

References

Cameron, L. D., & Overall, N. C. (2018). Suppression and expression as distinct emotion-regulation processes in daily interactions: Longitudinal and meta-analyses. Emotion, 18(4), 465.

Gross, J. J., & Thompson, R. A. (2007). Emotion regulation: Conceptual foundations. In J. J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of emotion regulation (pp. 3–24). The Guilford Press.

Lane, R. D., & Smith, R. (2021). Levels of Emotional Awareness: Theory and measurement of a socio-emotional skill. Journal of Intelligence, 9(3), 42.

Wamsley, E. J., & Antrobus, J. (2006). A new beginning for empirical dream research [Review of The Scientific Study of Dreams: Neural Networks, Cognitive Development, and Content Analysis, by G. W. Domhoff]. The American Journal of Psychology, 119(1), 129–135.

Wegner, D. M., Schneider, D. J., Carter, S. R., & White, T. L. (1987). Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(1), 5–13