Psychoanalytic theory

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Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development relating to the practice of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. First laid out by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century (particularly in his 1899 book The Interpretation of Dreams ), 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. [1] Freud had ceased his analysis of the brain and his physiological studies and shifted his focus to the study of the psyche, 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. [2]

Contents

Definition

Psychoanalytic and psychoanalytical are used in English. The latter is the older term, and at first, simply meant 'relating to the analysis of the human psyche.' But with the emergence of psychoanalysis as a distinct clinical practice, both terms came to describe that. Although both are still used, today, the normal adjective is psychoanalytic. [3]

Psychoanalysis is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as

A therapeutic method, originated by Sigmund Freud, for treating mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the patient's mind and bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind, using techniques such as dream interpretation and free association. Also: a system of psychological theory is associated with this method. [4]

The beginnings

Freud began his studies on psychoanalysis in collaboration with Dr. Josef Breuer, most notably in relation to the case study of Anna O. [5] Anna O. was subject to a number of psychosomatic disturbances, such as not being able to drink out of fear. [6] Breuer and Freud found that hypnosis was a great help in discovering more about Anna O. and her treatment. Freud frequently referred to the study on Anna O. in his lectures on the origin and development of psychoanalysis.

Observations in the Anna O. case led Freud to theorize that the problems faced by hysterical patients could be associated with painful childhood experiences that could not be recalled. The influence of these lost memories shaped the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of patients. These studies contributed to the development of the psychoanalytic theory. [7]

The unconscious

In psychoanalytic theory, the unconscious mind consists of ideas and drives that have been subject to the mechanism of Repression: anxiety-producing impulses in childhood are barred from consciousness, but do not cease to exist, and exert a constant pressure in the direction of consciousness. However, the content of the unconscious is only knowable to consciousness through its representation in a disguised or distorted form, by way of dreams and neurotic symptoms, as well as in slips of the tongue and jokes. The psychoanalyst seeks to interpret these conscious manifestations in order to understand the nature of the repressed. In psychoanalytic terms, the unconscious does not include all that is not conscious, but rather that which is actively repressed from conscious thought. Freud viewed the unconscious as a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, anxiety-producing wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of consciousness by the mechanism of repression. Such unconscious mental processes can only be recognized through analysis of their effects in consciousness. Unconscious thoughts are not directly accessible to ordinary introspection, but they are capable of partially evading the censorship mechanism of repression in a disguised form, manifesting, for example, as dream elements or neurotic symptoms. Dreams and symptoms are supposed to be capable of being "interpreted" during psychoanalysis, with the help of methods such as free association, dream analysis, and analysis of verbal slips. [8]

Personality structure

In Freud's model the psyche consists of three different elements, the id, ego, and the superego. The id is the aspect of personality that is driven by internal and basic drives and needs, such as hunger, thirst, and the drive for sex, or libido. The id acts in accordance with the pleasure principle. Due to the instinctual quality of the id, it is impulsive and unaware of the implications of actions. The superego is driven by the morality principle. It enforces the morality of social thought and action on an intrapsychic level. It employs morality, judging wrong and right and using guilt to discourage socially unacceptable behavior. [9] [10] The ego is driven by the reality principle. The ego seeks to balance the conflicting aims of the id and superego, by trying to satisfy the id's drives in ways that are compatible with reality. The Ego is how we view ourselves: it is what we refer to as 'I' (Freud's word is the German ich, which simply means 'I').

Defense mechanisms

The ego balances demands of the id, the superego, and of reality to maintain a healthy state of consciousness, where there is only minimal intrapsychic conflict. It thus reacts to protect the individual from stressors and from anxiety by distorting internal or external reality to a lesser or greater extent. This prevents threatening unconscious thoughts and material from entering the consciousness. The ten different defence mechanisms initially enumerated by Anna Freud [11] are: repression, regression, reaction formation, isolation of affect, undoing, projection, introjection, turning against the self, reversal into the opposite, and sublimation. In the same work, however, she details other manoeuvres such as identification with the aggressor and intellectualisation that would later come to be considered defence mechanisms in their own right. Furthermore, this list has been greatly expanded upon by other psychoanalysts, with some authors [12] claiming to enumerate in excess of one hundred defence mechanisms.

Psychology theories

Psychosexual development

Freud's take on the development of the personality (psyche). It is a stage theory that believes progress occurs through stages as the libido is directed to different body parts. The different stages, listed in order of progression, are Oral, Anal, Phallic (Oedipus complex), Latency, Genital. The Genital stage is achieved if people meet all their needs throughout the other stages with enough available sexual energy. Individuals who do not have their needs met in a given stage become fixated, or "stuck" in that stage.

Neo-analytic theory

Freud's theory and work with psychosexual development led to Neo-Analytic/ Neo-Freudians who also believed in the importance of the unconscious, dream interpretations, defense mechanisms, and the integral influence of childhood experiences but had objections to the theory as well. They do not support the idea that development of the personality stops at age 6, instead, they believed development spreads across the lifespan. They extended Freud's work and encompassed more influence from the environment and the importance of conscious thought along with the unconscious. The most important theorists are Erik Erikson (Psychosocial Development), Anna Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler and Karen Horney, and including the school of object relations. Erikson's Psychosocial Development theory is based on eight stages of development. The stages are trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame, initiative vs. guilt, industry vs. inferiority, identity vs. confusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generatively vs. stagnation, and integrity vs. despair. These are important to the psychoanalytic theory because it describes the different stages that people go through life. Each stage has a major impact on their life outcomes since they are going through conflicts at each stage and whichever route they decide to take, will have certain outcomes. [13]

Criticisms

Some claim that the theory is lacking in empirical data and too focused on pathology. [14] Other criticisms are that the theory lacks consideration of culture and its influence on personality. [15] [16]

Psychoanalytic theory comes from Freud and is focused on childhood. This might be an issue since most believe studying children can be inconclusive. One major concern lies in if observed personality will be a lifelong occurrence or if the child will shed it later in life. [17]

Application to the arts and humanities

Psychoanalytic theory is a major influence in Continental philosophy and in aesthetics in particular. Freud is sometimes considered a philosopher. The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, and the philosophers Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, have written extensively on how psychoanalysis informs philosophical analysis. [18] [19] [20] [21] Other philosophers such as Alain Badiou and Rafael Holmberg have argued that the meaning of psychoanalysis for philosophy was not immediately clear, but that they have come to reciprocally define each other. [22] [23]

When analyzing literary texts, the psychoanalytic theory is sometimes used (often specifically with regard to the motives of the author and the characters) to reveal purported concealed meanings or to purportedly better understand the author's intentions. [24]

Related Research Articles

Psychoanalysis is a theory and field of research developed by Sigmund Freud. It describes the human mind as an apparatus that emerged along the path of evolution and consists mainly of three functionally interlocking instances: a set of innate needs, a consciousness to satisfy them by ruling the muscular apparatus, and a memory for storing experiences that arises during this. Furthermore the theory includes insights into the effects of traumatic education and a technique for bringing repressed content back into the consciousness, in particular the diagnostic interpretation of dreams. Overall, psychoanalysis is a method for the examination and treatment of mental disorders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sigmund Freud</span> Founder of psychoanalysis (1856–1939)

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche, through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst, and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it.

In psychoanalysis and other psychological theories, the unconscious mind is the part of the psyche that is not available to introspection. Although these processes exist beneath the surface of conscious awareness, they are thought to exert an effect on conscious thought processes and behavior. Empirical evidence suggests that unconscious phenomena include repressed feelings and desires, memories, automatic skills, subliminal perceptions, and automatic reactions. The term was coined by the 18th-century German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The id, ego and superego are three different, interacting instances of the human soul as Sigmund Freud summarized and defined it in his structural model. He developed this theoretical psychic apparatus to describe the basic structure and various phenomena of mental life as they were encountered in psychoanalytic practice. Freud himself used the German terms das Es, Ich, and Über-Ich. The Latin terms id, ego and superego were chosen by his original translators and have remained in use. Freud used the terms soul and psyche synonymously in the sense of the human organism as a whole, focussing on the mental phenomena that cannot be concretely separated from matter and in this respect in strict distinction to the religious concept of "soul".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Melanie Klein</span> Austrian-British psychoanalyst (1882–1960)

Melanie Klein was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Klein suggested that pre-verbal existential anxiety in infancy catalyzed the formation of the unconscious, which resulted in the unconscious splitting of the world into good and bad idealizations. In her theory, how the child resolves that split depends on the constitution of the child and the character of nurturing the child experiences. The quality of resolution can inform the presence, absence, and/or type of distresses a person experiences later in life.

In psychology, introjection is the unconscious adoption of the thoughts or personality traits of others. It occurs as a normal part of development, such as a child taking on parental values and attitudes. It can also be a defense mechanism in situations that arouse anxiety. It has been associated with both normal and pathological development.

Repression is a key concept of psychoanalysis, where it is understood as a defense mechanism that "ensures that what is unacceptable to the conscious mind, and would if recalled arouse anxiety, is prevented from entering into it." According to psychoanalytic theory, repression plays a major role in many mental illnesses, and in the psyche of the average person.

Ego psychology is a school of psychoanalysis rooted in Sigmund Freud's structural id-ego-superego model of the mind.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psychodynamics</span> Approach to psychology

Psychodynamics, also known as psychodynamic psychology, in its broadest sense, is an approach to psychology that emphasizes systematic study of the psychological forces underlying human behavior, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate to early experience. It is especially interested in the dynamic relations between conscious motivation and unconscious motivation.

In psychoanalysis, preconscious is the loci preceding consciousness. Thoughts are preconscious when they are unconscious at a particular moment, but are not repressed. Therefore, preconscious thoughts are available for recall and easily 'capable of becoming conscious'—a phrase attributed by Sigmund Freud to Josef Breuer.

In psychoanalysis, resistance is the individual's efforts to prevent repressed drives, feelings or thoughts from being integrated into conscious awareness.

Ernst Kris was an Austrian psychoanalyst and art historian.

Identification is a psychological process whereby the individual assimilates an aspect, property, or attribute of the other and is transformed wholly or partially by the model that other provides. It is by means of a series of identifications that the personality is constituted and specified. The roots of the concept can be found in Freud's writings. The three most prominent concepts of identification as described by Freud are: primary identification, narcissistic (secondary) identification and partial (secondary) identification.

Sigmund Freud noticed that humor, like dreams, can be related to unconscious content. In the 1905 book Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, as well as in the 1928 journal article Humor, Freud distinguished contentious jokes from non-contentious or silly humor. In fact, he sorted humor into three categories that could be translated as: joke, comic, and mimetic.

In psychoanalytic theory, the term psychic apparatus refers to the mental structures and mechanisms of the psyche. In Freud's 'topographical' model of the psyche, it refers to three systems – the Unconscious, the Pre-conscious, and the Conscious. In his later 'structural model', Freud described the psychic apparatus in terms of the id, ego and super-ego.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metapsychology</span> Psychological aspect

Metapsychology is that aspect of a psychological theory that discusses the terms that are essential to it, but leaves aside or transcends the phenomena that the theory deals with. Psychology refers to the concrete conditions of the human psyche, metapsychology to psychology itself.

Content in Freudian dream analysis refers to two closely connected aspects of the dream: the manifest content, and the latent content. Impulses and drives residing in the unconscious press toward consciousness during sleep, but are only able to evade the censorship mechanism of repression by associating themselves with words, ideas and images that are acceptable to consciousness. Thus the dream as consciously remembered upon waking is interpreted in psychoanalysis as a disguised or distorted representation of repressed desires.

Robert Waelder (1900–1967) was a noted Austrian psychoanalyst and member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Waelder studied under Anna Freud and Hermann Nunberg. He was known for his work bringing together psychoanalysis and politics and wrote extensively on the subject.

<i>The Ego in Freuds Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis</i>

The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis is the 1988 English-language translation of published in Paris by Le Seuil in 1977. The text of the Seminar, which was held by Jacques Lacan at the Hospital of Sainte-Anne in Paris between the Fall of 1954 and the Spring of 1955 and is the second one in the series, was established by Jacques-Alain Miller and translated by Sylvana Tomaselli.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freud's psychoanalytic theories</span> Look to unconscious drives to explain human behavior

Sigmund Freud is considered to be the founder of the psychodynamic approach to psychology, which looks to unconscious drives to explain human behavior. Freud believed that the mind is responsible for both conscious and unconscious decisions that it makes on the basis of psychological drives. The id, ego, and super-ego are three aspects of the mind Freud believed to comprise a person's personality. Freud believed people are "simply actors in the drama of [their] own minds, pushed by desire, pulled by coincidence. Underneath the surface, our personalities represent the power struggle going on deep within us".

References

  1. ↑ Tere sa de Lauretis, Freud's Drive (Basingstoke 2008) p. 3
  2. ↑ Tyson, Phyllis. (2002). The challenges of psychoanalytic developmental theory. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 50, 19–52.
  3. ↑ "psychoanalytical, adj. (and n.)." and "psychoanalytic, adj." OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2015. Web. 7 September 2015.
  4. ↑ "psychoanalysis, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2015. Web. 7 September 2015.
  5. ↑ , Sigmund Freud: The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis.
  6. ↑ , FreudFild: Anna O. Case.
  7. ↑ Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner. ""Psychology"". Second Edition. New York. Worth Publishers. 2009, 2011. p.12.
  8. ↑ Freud, S (1915). The Unconscious. XIV (2nd ed.). Hogarth Press, 1955.
  9. ↑ Friedman, H. W., & Schustack, M. W. (2011). Personality: Classics theories and modern research. (5th Edition). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
  10. ↑ Silberman, Edward. "Review of Psycho-dynamic Therapy: A Guide to Evidence-Based Practice." Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes 75.3 (2012): 298–301. PsycINFO. Web.
  11. ↑ Freud, A. (1937). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis. (Revised edition: 1966 (US), 1968 (UK))
  12. ↑ Blackman, J. S. (2004). 101 Defenses: How the Mind Shields Itself, New York: Routledge.
  13. ↑ Young, Kimball; Blum, Gerald S. (December 1953). "Psychoanalytic Theories of Personality". American Sociological Review. 18 (6): 714. doi:10.2307/2088147. ISSN   0003-1224. JSTOR   2088147.
  14. ↑ Mahmood, Omar M., and Sawssan R. Ahmed. Psychological Testing and Assessment. New York, NY, US: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, New York, NY, 2012. PsycINFO. Web.
  15. ↑ Hoggard, Lori S., Christy M. Byrd, and Robert M. Sellers. "Comparison of African American College Students' Coping with Racially and Nonracially Stressful Events." Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 18.4 (2012): 329–39. PsycINFO. Web.
  16. ↑ Giamo, Lisa S., Michael T. Schmitt, and H. R. Outten. "Perceived Discrimination, Group Identification, and Life Satisfaction among Multiracial People: A Test of the Rejection-Identification Model." Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 18.4 (2012): 319–28. PsycINFO. Web.
  17. ↑ Behrendt, Ralf-Peter (17 April 2018). The Evolved Structure of Human Social Behaviour and Personality. doi:10.4324/9780429481703. ISBN   9780429481703.
  18. ↑ Felman, Shoshana. Jacques Lacan and the adventure of insight: Psychoanalysis in contemporary culture. Harvard University Press, 1987.
  19. ↑ Spector, Jack J. The aesthetics of Freud: A study in psychoanalysis and art. Lane, Allen, 1973.
  20. ↑ Segal, Hanna. "A psychoanalytic approach to aesthetics." Reading Melanie Klein (1998): 203.
  21. ↑ Glover, Nicky. Psychoanalytic aesthetics: An introduction to the British School. Karnac Books, 2009.
  22. ↑ Badiou, Alain (2012). The Adventure of French Philosophy. Verso. ISBN   1844677931.
  23. ↑ Holmberg, Rafael (2023). "The Failed Interventions of Psychoanalysis: Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience as a Proxy-Intervention to Psychoanalysis and Philosophy". Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. 44 (4): 355-366. doi:10.1037/teo0000261.
  24. ↑ Lye, J. "Psychoanalysis and Literature" . Retrieved 17 March 2013.

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