This work is about the fundamentals of free association. Working from a large amount of clinical material, it enables us to see how the problems of the symbolization process are created in the minds of both the analysed and and the analyst. "Harvesting Free Association" gives detailed attention to the phenomena of hysteria, obsessional neurosis, and the death drive. Marita Torsti-Hagman also investigates the symbolizations of femininity, including the kinds of psychosomatic disturbances that the child-bearing and nursing mother suffer from. Conceptualizing the central role of inner-genitality as a catalyst for the integration of femininity she analyses the conflicts penis envy produces when there is insufficient potential in the woman's mind for binding it. This part of the book formulates a theory on the fundamental significance of hallucination during the foetal stage both for the formation of the deepest unconscious and for the functioning of primary repression. Marita Torsti-Hagman argues that drive is energy; and therefore that theory formation necessitates a language of charge and movement.
In contemporary psychoanalysis it is no longer sufficient to be satisfied with the understanding of the content of representations. The author has a long-standing interest in what psychoanalysis is, what Freud meant it to become and what it has been made into. The analyst's ability and inability to remain in touch with his own unconscious and to use it in his analytic work as an interpretative process, have been central foci of attention in the writing of this book.