**4.2 Restructuring mental content**

The relationship between FA and internally governing memories is linked to the self-echo, Heidegger's description of "Being" (Dasein) [44]. Heidegger proposed that *Free Association, Synchrony, and Neural Networks as Evolutionary Exponents in Psychoanalysis DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107964*

Being ("Da-Sein") consists of three places: Umwelt (animals and things); Mitwelt or "Mitsein" (human and social world); and Eigenwelt (inner self) [44].

Being (Dasein) "existence" is at the interface between self and "Umwelt" (Environment). In medicine and psychology, *trauma* can be considered a virtual impact between a human self and the environment [45]. The two colliding forces create an impact with an outcome that depends on factors arising from both colliding components: the self and the environment. Leffert [46] has covered extensively Heidegger's role in inspiring modern thinking in general and existentialism, in particular. (For a more detailed understanding of Heidegger's work and its influence on modern existentialism, see [46]).

FA may be one mechanism by which *Dasein* is deconstructed and reconstructed in psychoanalysis. For psychoanalysis, FA as a clinical method is of a particular significance as it acts at the interface between mental content of autobiographical memory and other forms of memories related to declarative, episodic, implicit memories of sensations, body memories, procedural, etc.

Thoughts undergo an adaptational mechanism similar to evolution. By means of nonlinear dynamic system processes, thought and script adaptation [1] may follow the rules of evolution. Therefore, thought and script adaptation is comprised of two interactive mechanisms: a) mutation; b) selection, adaptation by *mutation* (reshaping internal scripts in accordance with new environments); and *selection* (eliminating scripts that no longer serve social and personal adaptation). FA operates within a nonlinear dynamic in complex system theory [47]. It is my contention that one of the most significant roles of FA in psychoanalysis is its function to create recombination of thoughts to create new scripts of what we have previously referred to as "identity narrative" (IdN). IdN is a form of an implicit self-narrative [1, 24, 48–50].

Implicit self-narratives (ISN) or identity narratives (IdN) are major implicit memory foundations of identity, developed first in infancy but reshaped adaptively and maladaptively by the environment throughout life. FA in psychoanalysis may rework ISN according to the laws of nonlinear dynamic systems and predictive coding [47, 51, 52]. The analytic setting serves as the environmental holding pattern, which reshapes itself too throughout an analysis.

## **4.3 Interface, contiguity, and neuroscience**

Examining FA in the context of recent brain imaging and cognitive science studies has expanded the horizon of exploration in contemporary psychoanalysis [1, 53–55]. The notion that the brain and mental activity continue during rest has been known and established by neuroscience for many years [56]. Raichel et al. [57] reported the significance of a number of brain areas that remain active during rest in the MRI scanner. Such a task-independent state is associated with the activity of midline structures of the brain [58]. These areas were later referred to as the default mode network (DMN). Subsequent contributions have referred to an entire range of mental activity associated with different degrees of interwoven patterns of activation, between the DMN and the executive network (EN) [53, 59] of the left prefrontal cortex [60].

As functions of the default mode network (DMN) of the brain, the different variants of spontaneous thought activity (STA) include mind wandering, stream of consciousness, creative associations, and FA [61]. Novac and Blinder [1] added free association to the list of spontaneous thought as part of a continuum that contains different levels of voluntary constraint on the thinking process. Based on a review of brain imaging findings, and on work by Bauer et al. [59] in meditators, Novac

and Blinder [1] proposed that meditation, free association, and creative chain free association are on a functional continuum. These mental states share similarities, as they all include different degrees of the functional interplay of the DMN (associated with unrestrained thought) and the EN (associated with cognitive control). They may be linked to creativity and play, which often manifests in back-and-forth oscillation between mental states, resulting in the creation of paradigm shifts [62]. The equivalent neural network activity may result in a downregulation of the DMN, associated in the literature with overall health benefits [1].
