Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, who developed the practice from his theoretical model of personality organization and development, psychoanalytic theory. Freud's work stems partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions, mostly by students of Freud, such as Alfred Adler and his collaborator, Carl Gustav Jung, as well as by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.
Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development that guides psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. First laid out by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century, psychoanalytic theory has undergone many refinements since his work. The psychoanalytic theory came to full prominence in the last third of the twentieth century as part of the flow of critical discourse regarding psychological treatments after the 1960s, long after Freud's death in 1939. Freud had ceased his analysis of the brain and his physiological studies and shifted his focus to the study of the mind and the related psychological attributes making up the mind, and on treatment using free association and the phenomena of transference. His study emphasized the recognition of childhood events that could influence the mental functioning of adults. His examination of the genetic and then the developmental aspects gave the psychoanalytic theory its characteristics. Starting with his publication of The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899, his theories began to gain prominence.
Neo-Freudianism is a psychoanalytic approach derived from the influence of Sigmund Freud but extending his theories towards typically social or cultural aspects of psychoanalysis over the biological.
In philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, intersubjectivity is the relation or intersection between people's cognitive perspectives.
Relational psychoanalysis is a school of psychoanalysis in the United States that emphasizes the role of real and imagined relationships with others in mental disorder and psychotherapy. 'Relational psychoanalysis is a relatively new and evolving school of psychoanalytic thought considered by its founders to represent a "paradigm shift" in psychoanalysis'.
Interpersonal psychoanalysis is based on the theories of American psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan (1892–1949). Sullivan believed that the details of a patient's interpersonal interactions with others can provide insight into the causes and cures of mental disorder.
Harold Frederic Searles was one of the pioneers of psychiatric medicine specializing in psychoanalytic treatments of schizophrenia. Harold Searles has the reputation of being a therapeutic virtuoso with difficult and borderline patients; and of being, in the words of Horacio Etchegoyen, president of the IPA, "not only a great analyst but also a sagacious observer and a creative and careful theoretician".
Resistance, in psychoanalysis, refers to oppositional behavior when an individual's unconscious defenses of the ego are threatened by an external source. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalytic theory, developed his concept of resistance as he worked with patients who suddenly developed uncooperative behaviors during sessions of talk therapy. He reasoned that an individual that is suffering from a psychological affliction, which Freud believed to be derived from the presence of suppressed illicit or unwanted thoughts, may inadvertently attempt to impede any attempt to confront a subconsciously perceived threat. This would be for the purpose of inhibiting the revelation of any repressed information from within the unconscious mind.
Psychoanalytic dream interpretation is a subdivision of dream interpretation as well as a subdivision of psychoanalysis pioneered by Sigmund Freud in the early twentieth century. Psychoanalytic dream interpretation is the process of explaining the meaning of the way the unconscious thoughts and emotions are processed in the mind during sleep.
Modern psychoanalysis is the term used by Hyman Spotnitz to describe the techniques he developed for the treatment of narcissistic disorders.
Psychoanalytic conceptions of language refers to the intersection of psychoanalytic theory with linguistics and psycholinguistics. Language has been an integral component of the psychoanalytic framework since its inception, as evidenced by the fact that Anna O., whose treatment via the cathartic method influenced the later development of psychoanalytic therapy, referred to her method of treatment as the "talking cure".
Robert D. Stolorow is a psychoanalyst and philosopher, known for his works on intersubjectivity theory, post-Cartesian psychoanalysis, and emotional trauma. Important books include: Faces in a Cloud, Structures of Subjectivity, Psychoanalytic Treatment: An Intersubjective Approach (1987), Contexts of Being (1992), Working Intersubjectively (1997), Worlds of Experience (2002), Trauma and Human Existence (2007), and World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis (2011).
Lewis Aron was an American psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, teacher and lecturer on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis who made contributions particularly within the specialty known as relational psychoanalysis. Aron was the Director of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis in New York City. He was the founding president of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and was formerly President of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association. He was board certified in psychoanalysis by the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP) and a Fellow of the American Board of Psychoanalysis (FABP). His 1996 volume A Meeting of Minds: Mutuality in Psychoanalysis and his (1999) edited volume with Stephen Mitchell, Relational Psychoanalysis: The Emergence of a Tradition are considered two of the essential texts in contemporary American psychoanalysis. Together with Adrienne Harris, he edited the Relational Perspectives Book Series, which has published many of the texts in the field. Aron was one of the founders of the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues: The International Journal of Relational Perspectives.
Contemporary Psychoanalysis is a quarterly academic journal for the dissemination of psychoanalytic ideas.
Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation is a 1965 book about Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, by the French philosopher Paul Ricœur. In Freud and Philosophy, Ricœur interprets Freud's work in terms of hermeneutics, the theory of the rules that govern the interpretation of a particular text, and discusses phenomenology, a school of philosophy founded by Edmund Husserl. He addresses questions such as the nature of interpretation in psychoanalysis, the understanding of human nature to which it leads, and the relationship between Freud's interpretation of culture and other interpretations. The book was first published in France by Éditions du Seuil, and in the United States by Yale University Press.
Robert Joseph Langs was a psychiatrist, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst, the author, co-author, and editor of more than forty books on psychotherapy and human psychology. Over the course of more than fifty years, Langs developed a revised version of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, currently known as the “adaptive paradigm”. This is a distinctive model of the mind, and particularly of the mind’s unconscious component, significantly different from other forms of psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapy.
Henry Z'vi Lothane, M.D., is a Polish-born American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, educator and author. Lothane is currently Clinical Professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, specializing in the area of psychotherapy. He is the author of some eighty scholarly articles and reviews on various topics in psychiatry, psychoanalysis and the history of psychotherapy, as well as the author of a book on the famous Schreber case, entitled In Defense of Schreber: Soul Murder and Psychiatry. In Defense of Schreber examines the life and work of Daniel Paul Schreber against the background of 19th and early 20th century psychiatry and psychoanalysis.
Abstinence or the rule of abstinence is the principle of analytic reticence and/or frustration within a clinical situation. It is a central feature of psychoanalytic theory – relating especially to the handling of the transference in analysis.
Jon Mills is a Canadian philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist. His principle theoretical contributions have been in the philosophy of the unconscious, a critique of psychoanalysis, philosophical psychology, value inquiry, and the philosophy of culture. His clinical contributions are in the areas of attachment pathology, trauma, psychosis, and psychic structure.
Stanton Marlan, Ph.D., ABPP, FABP is an American clinical psychologist, Jungian psychoanalyst, author, and educator. Marlan has authored or edited scores of publications in Analytical Psychology and Archetypal Psychology. Two of his more well-known publications are The Black Sun. The Alchemy and Art of Darkness. and Archetypal Psychologies: Reflections in Honor of James Hillman. Marlan is also known for his polemics with German Jungian psychoanalyst Wolfgang Giegerich and the latter's Neo-Hegelian and Heideggerian developments of Jungian analysis. Marlan co-founded the Pittsburgh Society of Jungian Analysts and was the first director and training coordinator of the C. G. Jung Institute Analyst Training Program of Pittsburgh. Currently, Marlan is in private practice and serves as Adjunct Professor of Clinical Psychology at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
