Resistance (psychoanalysis)

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In psychoanalysis, resistance is the individual's efforts to prevent repressed drives, feelings or thoughts from being integrated into conscious awareness. [1]

Contents

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalytic theory, developed the concept of resistance as he worked with patients who suddenly developed uncooperative behaviors during the analytic session. Freud reasoned that an individual that is suffering from a psychological affliction, which in psychoanalytic theory is derived from the presence of repressed illicit impulses or thoughts, may engage in efforts to impede attempts to confront such unconscious impulses or thoughts. [2]

Resistance and the Unconscious

In an early exposition of his new technique, Freud wrote that there is "another point of view which you may take up in order to understand the psychoanalytic method. The discovery of the unconscious and the introduction of it into consciousness is performed in the face of a continuous resistance on the part of the patient. The process of bringing this unconscious material to light is associated with pain, and because of this pain the patient again and again rejects it". [3] He went on to add that "It is for you then to interpose in this conflict in the patient's mental life. If you succeed in persuading him to accept, by virtue of a better understanding, something that up to now, in consequence of this automatic regulation by pain, he has rejected (repressed), you will then have accomplished something towards his education ... Psychoanalytic treatment may in general be conceived of as such a re-education in overcoming internal resistances". [3]

Primary/secondary gains from illness in resistance

Although the term resistance as it is known today in psychotherapy is largely associated with Sigmund Freud, the idea that some patients "cling to their disease" [3] was a popular one in medicine in the nineteenth century, and referred to patients whose maladies were presumed to persist due to the secondary gains of social, physical, and financial benefits associated with illness. [4] While Freud was trained in what is known as the (secondary) gain from illness that follows a neurosis, [5] he was more interested in the unconscious processes through which he could explain the primary gains that patients derive from their psychiatric symptoms. [6] [7]

The model he devised suggests that the symptoms represent an unconscious tradeoff in exchange for the sufferer being spared other, experientially worse, psychological displeasures, by way of what Freud called a compromise formation; "settling the conflict by constructing a symptom is the most convenient way out and the one most agreeable to the pleasure principle". [8]

Resistance as the product of conflicting agencies

To Freud, the primary gains that stood behind the patient's resistance were the result of an intrapsychic compromise, reached between two or more conflicting agencies: "psychoanalysis ... maintains that the isolation and unconsciousness of this [one] group of ideas have been caused by an active opposition on the part of other groups". [9] [ verification needed ] Freud called the one psychic agency the "repressing" consciousness, [10] and the other agency, the unconscious, he eventually referred to as the "id". [11] [12]

The compromise the two competing parties strive for is to achieve maximum drive satisfaction with minimum resultant pain (negative reactions from within and without). Freud theorized that psychopathology was due to unsuccessful compromises – "We have long observed that every neurosis has the result, and therefore probably the purpose, of forcing the patient out of real life, of alienating him from actuality" [13] – as opposed to "successful defense" which resulted in "apparent health". [10]

Key players in the Kompromisslösung theory of symptom production, at the core of Freud's theory of resistance, were: repression (often used interchangeably with the term anticathexis), defense, displeasure, anxiety, danger, compromise, and symptom. As Freud wrote, "The action undertaken to protect repression is observable in analytic treatment as resistance. Resistance presupposes the existence of what I have called anticathexis." [14]

Forms of resistance

In 1926, Freud was to alter his view of anxiety, with implications for his view of resistance. "Whereas the old view made it natural to suppose that anxiety arose from the libido belonging to the repressed instinctual impulses, the new one, on the contrary, made the ego the source of anxiety". [15]

Freud still understood resistance to be intimately bound up with the fact of transference: "It may thus be said that the theory of psycho-analysis is an attempt to account for two observed facts that strike one conspicuously and unexpectedly whenever an attempt is made to trace the symptoms of a neurotic back to their source in his past life: the facts of transference and resistance. Any line of investigation, no matter what its direction, which recognizes these two facts and takes them as the starting-point of its work may call itself psychoanalysis, though it arrives at results other than my own". [16] Indeed, to this day most major schools of psychotherapeutic thought continue to at least recognize, if not "take as the starting-point", the two phenomena of transference and resistance. [4] [17] [18] [19]

Nevertheless his new conceptualisation of the role of anxiety caused him to reframe the phenomena of resistance, to embrace how "The analyst has to combat no less than five kinds of resistance, emanating from three directions –the ego, the id and the superego". [20] He considered the ego to be the source of three types of resistance: repression, transference and gain from illness, i.e., secondary gain. [20] Freud defined a fourth variety, Id resistance, arising from the id, as resistance that requires "working-through" [15] the product of the repetition compulsion. A fifth, coming from the superego and the last to be discovered, "... seems to originate from the sense of guilt or the need for punishment" [15]  –i.e., self-sabotage.

All these serve the explicit purpose of defending the ego against feelings of discomfort, for, as Freud wrote: "It is hard for the ego to direct its attention to perceptions and ideas which it has up till now made a rule of avoiding, or to acknowledge as belonging to itself impulses that are the complete opposite of those which it knows as its own." [14]

Repression

Repression is the form of resistance where the ego pushes offensive memories, ideas, and impulses down into the unconscious. Essentially, the patient is unconsciously hiding memories from the conscious mind. [21]

Transference

Typically unconscious, transference is when the patient allows past experiences to affect present relationships. In therapy, this may come about if the therapist reminds the patient, either consciously or unconsciously, of someone in their past who may have had an early impact on their life. Subsequently, the patient may suddenly tend to regard the therapist in either a positive or negative manner, depending upon the nature of the past influence. [22]

Ego-resistance

This form of resistance is a neurotic regression to a proposed state of childlike safety. Usually, it involves the patient's attempts to gain attention and sympathy by emphasizing minor medical symptoms (i.e. headaches, nausea, and depression). [21] [23]

Id resistance

Id resistance is the opposition put up by the unconscious id against any change in its accustomed patterns of gratification. [23] Id resistance reflects the unconscious desire for consistency in a manner that is based upon the pleasure principle. Since the id is an innate portion of human instinct, interpretation of the conscious is an insufficient method, thus the psychoanalyst must first be able to surmount resistances by the means of deduction of patients' unconscious defenses that are presented through exploitation of the mechanism of transference. [21]

Freud's analysis

As Freud's clinical practice progressed, he noticed how, even when his patients' conscious minds had accepted the existence of, and begun working through their neurotic patterns, they still had to deal with what he called Id resistance: "the resistance of the unconscious...the power of the compulsion to repeat – the attraction exerted by the unconscious prototypes upon the repressed instinctual process". [24]

Later developments

W. R. D. Fairbairn saw id resistance in terms of early attachment to an internalised bad object, so that the individual remained bound by ties of yearning towards, and anger at rejection by, the repudiating parent of childhood. [25]

Id resistance manifests itself in group therapy in three main psychosexual forms: oral-level id resistance might take the form of an obsequious dependence on the therapist's words, or alternatively express hostility in cutting, biting remarks; [26] anal hostility can be displayed in dumping material indiscriminately on the therapist; and phallic-level id resistance appears in the form of competition with, and/or seductive ploys towards, therapist and other group members. [27] Acting out and acting in of id resistances in group therapy need to be contained by an emphasis on words as the central means of therapeutic interaction. [28]

Eric Berne saw personality in terms of a life-script laid down in early childhood, and considered that the main obstacle to recovery in therapy "is the pull of the script, something like the Id resistance of Freud". [29]

Superego resistance

Superego resistance is the opposition put up in therapy against recovery by the patient's conscience, their sense of underlying guilt. [23] It prompts personal punishment by the means of self-sabotage or self-imposed impediment. It has been considered by some (though not by Freud) [30] the weakest form of resistance, reflecting the moralistic sentiments of the superego. [21]

Freud's late formulation

Freud in the twenties came belatedly to the realisation of the importance of an 'unconscious morality' in opposing his therapeutic aims. [31] Thereupon he divided the sources of resistance into five, pointing out that "The fifth, coming from the super-ego and the last to be discovered…seems to originate from the sense of guilt or need for punishment". [30] However he also pointed out how often the patient does not feel guilty so much as unwell, when their superego resistance is in operation. [32]

Subsequent developments

Object relations theory tended to see superego resistance in terms of a patient's relationship with an internalised critical/persecutory parent figure. [33] Reluctance to end the 'security' of the bond to the internalised parent strengthens the superego resistance. [34] Where the ego ideal is harshly perfectionist, or represents an internalised mother who idealised suffering over enjoyment, [35] superego resistance takes the form of a refusal to be 'corrupted' by the progress of the therapy. [36] >

In group therapy, superego resistance may be externalised or internalised. In the first case, a moralistic sub-group may form, which is hypercritical of other, less conformist members; while in the second case (of internalisation), the severity of the inward conscience, and the need for punishment, may lead to action destructive to the self and to the progress of the treatment. [37]

Freud's treatment of resistance

Freud viewed all five categories of resistance as requiring more than just intellectual insight or understanding to overcome. Instead he favored a slow process of working through.

Working through allows patients "... to get to know this resistance" and "... discover the repressed instinctual trends which are feeding the resistance" and it is this experientially convincing process that "distinguishes analytic treatment from every kind of suggestive treatment". [38] For this reason Freud insisted that therapists remain neutral, saying only as much as "is absolutely necessary to keep him [the patient] talking", so that resistance could be seen as clearly as possible in patients' transference, and become obvious to the patients themselves. [39] The inextricable link suggested by Freud between transference and resistance [6] [40] perhaps encapsulates his legacy to psychotherapy.

Applications

Psychoanalysis is, altogether, considered to be a type of insight-oriented therapeutic program. Despite general initial reservations, these types of programs have since transitioned from being quite marginal to becoming more well-known and mainstream. [41] In consideration to the theory of resistance itself, within a clinical setting, the expression of resistance is considered to be a significant stage to recovery because it reveals the presence of repression. Additionally, it is indicative of progress in the effort of resolving any underlying issues that may be the cause of personal dysfunction. As resistance is theorized to be a manifestation of the unconscious mind's attempts to protect the ego, it is the task of the psychoanalyst to combat this opposition by directing the patient to confront the unacceptable desires or uncomfortable memories. By this course of action, the patient may reach a cathartic conclusion. [42]

Criticisms

Steve de Shazer, using a solution-focused therapy model, declared in the mid-1980s that resistance was dead, and that clients who do not follow therapists' directions should be seen as "cooperating" by showing therapists how best to help them. [43]

Psychoanalysts and their critics remain divided with regard to the concept of resistance. Since Freud first developed his theory of resistance, he has been significantly criticized for using personally favorable and unfalsifiable theory, among other problems. [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] [49] For example, if a patient were to agree with a psychoanalyst's inference about themselves, it is a confirmation that there is something they are repressing; however, if the patient disagrees, it is also a sign they are engaged in repression, which means the psychoanalyst is correct in either scenario (see also: Gaslighting, Kafkatrap). [49] [50] [51] Additionally, some relational psychoanalysts believe that the success of psychoanalysis is not due its various explanatory systems or its reasoning about repression, but rather simply due to the process of interpersonal communication. [51] [52] [53]

Notes

  1. ↑ Karen, Horney (1939). New Ways in Psychoanalysis. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 21. ISBN   978-0-393-31230-0. [U]nconscious motivations remain unconscious because we are interested in not becoming aware of them. [...] It implies that if an attempt is made to unearth unconscious motivations we will have to put up a struggle because some interest of ours is at stake. This, in succinct terms, is the concept of 'resistance', which is of paramount value to therapy.
  2. ↑ Larsen & Buss 2008, p. 696.
  3. 1 2 3 Freud, S. (1959) [1904], Strachey, James (ed.), Freud's psycho-analytic procedure, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psy chological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 7, London: Hogarth Press, pp. 249–270
  4. 1 2 Leahy, Robert L. (2003-07-16). Overcoming Resistance in Cognitive Therapy. Guilford Press. ISBN   978-1-57230-936-4.
  5. ↑ Freud 1989, p. 252.
  6. 1 2 Fenichel 1972.
  7. ↑ Wolitzky, D. L. (2003). "The theory and practice of traditional psychoanalytic treatment". In Gurman, A. S.; Messer, S. B. (eds.). Essential psychotherapies (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. pp. 24–68.
  8. ↑ Freud, Sigmund (1977). Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. WW Norton & Company. p. 429.
  9. ↑ Freud, Psychopathology, p. 109.
  10. 1 2 Freud, S. (1959). "Further remarks on the defense neuro-psychoses". In E. Jones (Ed.) & J. Riviere (Trans.) Collected Papers (Vol. 1, pp. 155–182). New York: Basic Books. (Original work published in 1896.)
  11. ↑ Freud, S. (1959). "Analysis terminable and interminable". In E. Jones (Ed.) & J. Riviere (Trans.) Collected Papers (Vol. 5, pp. 316–357). New York: Basic Books. (Original work published in 1937.)
  12. ↑ Wyss, D. (1973). Psychoanalytic Schools from the Beginning to the Present. J. Aronson. ISBN   978-0-87668-099-5 . Retrieved 2024-08-20.
  13. ↑ Freud, S. (1959). "Formulations regarding the two principles in mental functioning". In E. Jones (Ed.) & J. Riviere (Trans.) Collected Papers (Vol. 4, pp. 13–21). New York: Basic Books. (Original work published in 1911.)
  14. 1 2 Freud, S. (1959). "Inhibitions, symptoms, and anxiety". In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.) The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 20, pp. 75–175). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published in 1926.)
  15. 1 2 3 Freud, Psychopathology, p. 320.
  16. ↑ Freud, S. (1959). "On the history of the psycho-analytic movement". In E. Jones (Ed.) & J. Riviere (Trans.) Collected Papers (Vol. 1, pp. 287–359). New York: Basic Books. (Original work published in 1914.)
  17. ↑ Beutler, L. E., Moleiro, C. M., & Talebi, H. (2002). "Resistance". In J. C. Norcross (Ed.), Psychotherapy relationships that work: Therapist contributions and responsiveness to patient needs (pp. 129–144). New York: Oxford University Press.
  18. ↑ Anderson, C. M. & Stewart, S. (1983). Mastering resistance: A practical guide to family therapy. New York: Guilford Press.
  19. ↑ Wachtel, P. L. (1982). Resistance: Psychodynamic and behavioral approaches. New York: Plenum Press.
  20. 1 2 Freud, Psychopathology, p. 319.
  21. 1 2 3 4 Wolman, Benjamin (1968). The Unconscious Mind: The Meaning of Freudian Psychology (1st ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. p.  182. ISBN   978-0-13-935767-1.
  22. ↑ Williams, Glen O. Gabbard, Bonnie E. Litowitz, Paul (2012). Textbook of psychoanalysis (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Pub. ISBN   9781585629794.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  23. 1 2 3 Freud, Sigmund (1926). Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety . New York City: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN   978-0393008746.
  24. ↑ Freud 1989, p. 319-320.
  25. ↑ Stark, Martha (2002). Working with Resistance. Northvale, N.J: Jason Aronson. p. 96-97. ISBN   0-7657-0370-X.
  26. ↑ Rosenthal 1993, p. 88-89.
  27. ↑ Rosenthal 1993, p. 89.
  28. ↑ Rosenthal 1993, p. 90.
  29. ↑ E Berne, What Do You Say After You Say Hello? (Corgi 1974) p. 311
  30. 1 2 Freud 1989, p. 320.
  31. ↑ J Malcolm, Psychoanalysis (London 1988) p. 30-2
  32. ↑ S Freud, On Metapsychology (PFL 11) p. 391
  33. ↑ J Sandler, The Patient and the Analyst (1992) p. 113
  34. ↑ S Grand, The Modern Freudians (1999) p. 33
  35. ↑ H Strean, Psychoanalytic Approaches to the Resistant and Difficult Patient (1985) p. 92-3
  36. ↑ Fenichel 1972, p. 310.
  37. ↑ Rosenthal 1993, p. 18, 88.
  38. ↑ Freud, S. (1959). "Further recommendations in the technique of psychoanalysis: Recollection, repetition, and working through". In E. Jones (Ed.) & J. Riviere (Trans.) Collected Papers (Vol. 2, pp. 366–376). New York: Basic Books. (Original work published in 1914.)
  39. ↑ Freud, S. (1959). "Further recommendations in the technique of psychoanalysis". In E. Jones (Ed.) & J. Riviere (Trans.) Collected Papers (Vol. 2, pp. 342–365). New York: Basic Books. (Original work published in 1913.)
  40. ↑ Freud, S. (1959). "The dynamics of the transference". In E. Jones (Ed.) & J. Riviere (Trans.) Collected Papers (Vol. 2, pp. 312–322). New York: Basic Books. (Original work published in 1912.)
  41. ↑ Harrington, Anne; Dunne, John (2015). "When mindfulness is therapy: ethical qualms, historical perspectives" (PDF). American Psychologist. 70 (7): 621–631. doi:10.1037/a0039460. PMID   26436312. S2CID   43129186.
  42. ↑ Larsen & Buss 2008.
  43. ↑ Gladding, Samuel (1998). "Premises of solution-focused family therapy" . Family Therapy: History, Theory, and Practice (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill. p.  259. ISBN   013836396X. OCLC   35910308. Another premise of solution-focused family therapy is that families really want to change. As a way of underscoring this idea, deShazer (1984) declared the death of 'resistance' as a concept. Thus, when families do not follow therapists' directions, they are 'cooperating' by teaching therapists the best way to help them.
  44. ↑ As early as 1932, psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi wrote: "The possibility should not be rejected out of hand that the analyst's habit of identifying any obstacle encountered as resistance on the part of the patient can be misused in an equally paranoid, that is, delusional, way for the projection or disavowal of his own complexes." Dupont, Judith, ed. (1988) [1932]. The clinical diary of Sándor Ferenczi. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p.  26. ISBN   0674135261. OCLC   17952532.
  45. ↑ Rieff, Philip (1979) [1959]. Freud, the mind of the moralist (3rd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p.  98. ISBN   0226716406. OCLC   5103089. Built into the therapy, through the notion of resistance, is disavowal of the patient's critical judgment. Indeed, the concept of resistance is a mode of attack for the therapist. [...] Whatever was important, the patient 'resisted'. Whatever the patient 'resisted' was important. Freud applied his theory of resistance not only to the strategies and compliances of patients, but to the general public's reception of his science. Time has weakened the invincible explanation Freud gave of why his ideas met objection.
  46. ↑ Holt, Robert R. (October 1985). "The current status of psychoanalytic theory". Psychoanalytic Psychology . 2 (4): 289–315 [307]. doi:10.1037/0736-9735.2.4.289. American psychoanalysis has lived for so long within a snug cocoon of myth that it seems unable to go through the predictable pains of metamorphosis into a viably progressive discipline. The protective threads it has wound around itself include warding off all criticism as resistance, idolatry of Freud, and faithful internalization of all his faults as a scientist and writer.
  47. ↑ Mathers, Carola B. B. (May 1986). "Psychoanalysis: science or nonscience?". Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. 10 (5): 103–104. doi: 10.1192/S0140078900027267 . In the framework of psychoanalysis the problem of describing real phenomena is evident: one cannot 'see' transference or resistance, and a sceptic (in the lay sense) might argue that he could not perceive these phenomena through their effects either.
  48. ↑ Cioffi, Frank (1998). Freud and the question of pseudoscience. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company. p.  155. ISBN   081269385X. OCLC   39281914. Wolheim continues: 'The original wishes might remain unconscious; if, that is, repression persisted, now manifesting itself in the form of resistance.' One suspects a certain disingenuousness in retaining the word 'resistance' to designate the non-occurrence of the 'inner change in the patient' [...] when it has hitherto been used to refer to the reluctance of the patient to accept interpretations or his failure to produce material confirmatory of them. The effect of its retention is to blind us to the fact that no criterion but therapeutic inefficacy is provided for determining when this kind of resistance has been encountered.
  49. 1 2 Boudry, Maarten; Buekens, Filip (May 2011). "The epistemic predicament of a pseudoscience: social constructivism confronts Freudian psychoanalysis" (PDF). Theoria. 77 (2): 159–179. doi:10.1111/j.1755-2567.2011.01098.x. hdl: 1854/LU-1108932 . when Freud was unable to find traces of a pathological complex or unconscious desire to account for a patient's behaviour, he was undeterred and treated this as a token of unconscious resistance. The more the material offered by a patient resisted interpretation, the more it counted in favour of the theory. This characteristic pattern of reasoning in psychoanalysis bears a striking resemblance to conspiracy theorizing (Farrell 1996). [...] The way in which the concept of resistance has been put to use by Freud and his acolytes, for example, has been rightly dismissed by critics as a specimen of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose reasoning. Nevertheless, it proves difficult to disentangle such fallacious reasoning from psychoanalytic theory itself, because it is effectively supported by the way the unconscious is conceptualized in Freudian theory. If Freud's model of the human mind is correct, and if the unconscious really is some sort of trickster in disguise, then indeed it becomes natural to label counter-arguments and criticisms as manifestations of unconscious resistance to psychoanalytic 'truths' and 'interpretations'.
  50. ↑ Holowchak, Andrew (2012). "The problem of unassailability: analogy and adequacy of constructions in Freudian psychoanalysis". Psychoanalytic Psychology . 29 (2): 255–266 [257]. doi:10.1037/a0020863. Freud also maintains that a properly trained analyst does not take 'yes' and 'no' answers literally, but only within the context of all that has transpired thus far between therapist and patient. Both replies are ambiguous and either reply can be a sign of a patient's resistance. 'Yes' can be a symptom of resistance, as when a patient agrees with a construction to avoid or delay disclosure of some unconscious truth. Yet it can also indicate honest agreement. 'No' is most often also a symptom of resistance, as when a patient disagrees with a construction to block further penetration by an analysis. Yet it too can also indicate honest disagreement.
  51. 1 2 Dorpat, Theodore L. (1996). Gaslighting, the double whammy, interrogation, and other methods of covert control in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson. pp. 241, 245. ISBN   978-1568218281. OCLC   34548677. I do not mean to imply that a patient who disagrees or opposes something the analyst says or does may not also be manifesting resistance. What I do assert is that the criteria for determining the presence of resistance should not include merely the fact of the patient's disagreement or nonacceptance. Though some clinicians would not define resistance as the patient's disagreement with the analyst, they do in practice deal with their patients' disagreement or opposition to interpretations as if they were 'resistances' and something to overcome. [...] Freud's militaristic view of resistance was, I suspect, inextricably linked with, and probably an integral aspect of, the unanalyzed authoritarian tendencies in his personality. [...] Psychoanalysis urgently needs a modified, nonadversarial concept of resistance, a view that does not blame the patient or rationalize the use of charisma or coercive methods for overcoming resistance. In the past decade, an interactional and nonadversarial concept of resistance is evolving in which resistance is conceptualized as the product of both parties of the analytic dialogue.
  52. ↑ Gill, Merton (January 1995). "Classical and relational psychoanalysis". Psychoanalytic Psychology . 12 (1): 89–107 [101]. doi:10.1037/h0079600. Busch (this issue) also draws attention to the paucity of explicit discussion of resistance in relational (and object relations?) writing. The observation is an interesting one. [...] Furthermore, a number of recent authors, including Schafer and Spezzano (1993), describe what is called resistance as an interpersonal communication. It may be, therefore, that the absence of explicit reference to resistance in relational writing results from dealing in interpersonal terms with what is called resistance in classical analysis, but without the explicit understanding and revision of what in classical analysis is called resistance, as suggested by Schafer.
  53. ↑ Ringstrom, Philip A. (January 2007). "Scenes that write themselves: improvisational moments in relational psychoanaysis". Psychoanalytic Dialogues. 17 (1): 69–99. doi:10.1080/10481880701301303. S2CID   144179634. As a consequence, in contrast to the traditional therapist's role, the relational approach makes it makes it 'open game' for the patient to question the thoughts, intentions, and perspective of the therapist without this being seen a priori as resistance.

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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.

Psychoanalytic dream interpretation is a subdivision of dream interpretation as well as a subdivision of psychoanalysis pioneered by Sigmund Freud in the early 20th 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.

Transference neurosis is a term that Sigmund Freud introduced in 1914 to describe a new form of the analysand's infantile neurosis that develops during the psychoanalytic process. Based on Dora's case history, Freud suggested that during therapy the creation of new symptoms stops, but new versions of the patient's fantasies and impulses are generated. He called these newer versions "transferences" and characterized them as the substitution of the analyst for a person from the patient's past. According to Freud's description: "a whole series of psychological experiences are revived not as belonging to the past, but as applying to the person of the analyst at the present moment". When transference neurosis develops, the relationship with the therapist becomes the most important one for the patient, who directs strong infantile feelings and conflicts towards the therapist, e.g. the patient may react as if the analyst is his/her father.

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.

Child psychoanalysis is a sub-field of psychoanalysis which was founded by Anna Freud.

Joseph J. Sandler was a British psychoanalyst within the Anna Freud Grouping – now the Contemporary Freudians – of the British Psychoanalytical Society; and is perhaps best known for what has been called his 'silent revolution' in re-aligning the concepts of the object relations school within the framework of ego psychology.

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.

Robert Joseph Langs was a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychoanalyst. He was the author, co-author, or 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.

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