how to get started?

This is true throughout the journey, but it is particularly important at the beginning: talking. And even more important is how comfortable the analysand feels in talking about themselves to the analyst. The aim at this stage is what Freud called transference — a bond that allows the analysand to go beyond communicative speech to the analyst, and fall in free speech before the analyst.

This freer speech is known as free association. The idea is to allow thoughts and memories to emerge, and not to focus on a communicative role. This gives the unconscious a chance to emerge.