Free Association and its Discontents:  A Controversial Discussion

The Maurice Burke Paper Prize¹

We are at a juncture in which power demands un-free speech, in which inconvenient truths are being purged from public venues and discourses, and in which thought itself is under attack.  The persecution of any form of existence or expression seen as other has inundated public and private life, resulting in both physical and metaphorical erasure.  Meanwhile, recent developments in the digital realm have forced us to confront fundamental questions about the nature of thought, the ownership and manipulation of ideas, the commodification of creativity, and the further erosion of personal privacy.  This year, we specifically welcome contributions that move us further towards addressing the fundamental challenges to possibilities for inner and external freedom posed by the cultural forces around us, as we likewise welcome more general contributions towards our appreciation of the role psychoanalysis might play in our efforts to envision a productive and enriching practice of human well-being.

Psychoanalysis positions itself as a psychology of liberation in its enshrinement of free association as its “fundamental” rule.  Any other parameters that exist – conventions of time, payment and the like – have been created in order to protect a space in which the analysand is free to speak – and thus think – anything.  It is a singular space in which thought and speech have been described as having no direct “social consequences(2),” no direct implications for immediate action and limited direct intrusion into the privacy of the therapeutic setting, allowing for the emergence of various forms of dreaming and insight.  To fulfill that function, Freud and others have noted, externally-imposed limits on this freedom threaten the work as a whole.(3)  

Yet in the external world, the line between speech and action has perhaps never been less clear, as “hate speech” has spawned and been embraced and co-opted by authoritarian social movements that collapse meaning into social oppression, and as the ramifications of limits to speech in the name of protecting vulnerability and diversity are also being reconsidered.  Indeed, the notion of "free speech" itself has often been perversely enshrined in order to destroy that very principle through the mechanisms of its supposed valorization.  Thus the psychoanalytic conundrum of freedom is amplified, leading to the myriad dilemmas submissions are invited to address, such as: 

• What are the implications of the psychoanalytic experiment for our efforts to speak to the political and social catastrophes we are currently facing?
• What does psychoanalysis have to tell us about what it means to be human, and about the incursion of the non-human into our personal, familial and social spaces?
• What roles can psychoanalysis fulfill in the effort to preserve individual, relational and social dreaming as sources of growth?
• What resources do psychoanalytic thought and practice offer that allow for understanding our willingness to relinquish thinking to despotic forces?
• What are the areas of overlap and divergence between "free association" and "free speech?"
• What can be spoken in the consulting room?  How much is too much?  Can there be "too much?"
• What are the clinical consequences of free speech/free association, its therapeutic actions? 
• What are the social and psychological consequences of placing limits on what can be thought and said, or of not doing so? 
• How do limits on speech constrain thought, or even, alternatively, allow for its possibility?  

Submissions in any form are invited, but written submissions should aim to be no more than 15 double-spaced pages. A prize of $100, publication on the CCP website, a potential for public presentation as can be arranged, and a commemorative plaque will be awarded in each of three categories:(4)

Members of the general public

Members of the CCP Community

Students and Early Careers Professionals (3 years or less post-licensure)

The winning texts can be accessed on the CCP website: https://ccpsa.org/Maurice-Burke-Paper-Prize-2025.

Deadline for submissions is December  31, 2026 and winners will be announced February 1, 2027. Please specify under which of the three categories you are applying.  You can submit your work here: paperprize@ccpsa.org

In the meanwhile, we salute the winners of the 2025 Maurice Burke prize:

M. Grover, Free Association Under Surveillance: The Psychic Life of Anticipatory Coherence (General Public)

Renee Dickerson, The Right to Speak, the Right to Be (CCP Community)

Kenji Kuramitsu, Kill the Native: Zionism as Identification with the Aggressor and the Gaza Genocide ( Early career winner).

CCP also congratulates those entrants who were shortlisted for the MOB Prize:

Handan Sureyya Aysun, Where Do the Analytic and the Political Meet?

Michael O'Loughlin, Theorizing an Activist, Social Justice–Oriented, Emancipatory, and Collective Psychoanalysis

We thank all who contributed to the dialogue around the prize’s central theme.

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1. Maurice Burke was a founder, board member and twice president of CCP.  
2. John Friedman, personal communication
3. “It is very remarkable how the whole task becomes impossible if a reservation is allowed at any single place.  But we have only to reflect what would happen if the right of asylum existed at any one point in a town; how long would it be before all the riff-raff of the town had collected there?” (Freud, XII: 136-7)
4. Decisions of the judges will be final, and CCP reserves the right not to award a prize in a given year.