PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: and comprises a set of theories and techniques to discover unconscious processes and their influence on conscious thought, emotion and behavior. Psychoanalysis is a talk therapy method for treating mental disorders."All psychoanalytic theories include the idea that unconscious thoughts and feelings are central in mental functioning." Milton, Jane, Caroline Polmear, and Julia Fabricius. 2011. A Short Introduction to Psychoanalysis. SAGE. p. 27."What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might be considered an unfortunately abbreviated description, Freud said that anyone who recognizes transference and resistance is a psychoanalyst, even if he comes to conclusions other than his own. … I prefer to think of the analytic situation more broadly, as one in which someone seeking help tries to speak as freely as he can to someone who listens as carefully as he can with the aim of articulating what is going on between them and why. David Rapaport (1967a) once defined the analytic situation as carrying the method of interpersonal relationship to its last consequences." Gill, Merton M. 1999. "Psychoanalysis, Part 1: Proposals for the Future." The Challenge for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: Solutions for the Future. New York: American Mental Health Foundation. Archived 10 June 2009. Established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, it takes into account Darwin's theory of evolution, neurology findings, ethnology reports, and clinical research, including findings of his mentor Josef Breuer. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939.Mitchell, Juliet. 2000. Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessment of Freudian Psychoanalysis. London: Penguin Books. p. 341. In an encyclopedic article, he identified four foundational beliefs: "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex."
Two of Freud's early colleagues, Alfred Adler and Carl Jung, soon developed their own methods, individual and analytical psychology, respectively, which he said were not forms of psychoanalysis. After the author's death, neo-Freudian thinkers like Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan created some subfields.Birnbach, Martin. 1961. Neo-Freudian Social Philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University Press. p. 3. Jacques Lacan, who referred to his approach as a retour à Freud (return to Freud), described his metapsychology as a technical elaboration of the three-instance model of the psyche and examined the language-like structure of the unconscious.
Psychoanalysis has been a controversial discipline from the outset, although its influence on psychology and psychiatry is undisputed."Psychoanalysis has existed before the turn of the 20th century and, in that span of years, has established itself as one of the fundamental disciplines within psychiatry. The science of psychoanalysis is the bedrock of psychodynamic understanding and forms the fundamental theoretical frame of reference for a variety of forms of therapeutic intervention, embracing not only psychoanalysis itself but also various forms of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy and related forms of therapy using psychodynamic concepts." Sadock, Benjamin J., and Virginia A. Sadock. 2007. Kaplan and Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry (10th ed.). Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. p. 190."Psychoanalysis continues to be an important paradigm organizing the way many psychiatrists think about patients and treatment. However, its limitations are more widely recognized and it is assumed that many important advances in the future will come from other areas, particularly biologic psychiatry. As yet unresolved is the appropriate role of psychoanalytic thinking in organizing the treatment of patients and the training of psychiatrists after that biological revolution has borne fruit. Will treatments aimed at biologic defects or abnormalities become technical steps in a program organized in a psychoanalytic framework? Will psychoanalysis serve to explain and guide supportive intervention for individuals whose lives are deformed by biologic defect and therapeutic interventions, much as it now does for patients with chronic physical illness, with the psychoanalyst on the psychiatric dialysis program? Or will we look back on the role of psychoanalysis in the treatment of the seriously mentally ill as the last and most scientifically enlightened phase of the humanistic tradition in psychiatry, a tradition that became extinct when advances in biology allowed us to cure those we had so long only comforted?" Michels, Robert. 1999. "Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry: A Changing Relationship." The Challenge for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: Solutions for the Future. New York: American Mental Health Foundation. Archived 6 June 2009. Evidence suggests psychoanalysis, especially long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy, can be effective for certain disorders, though its overall efficacy remains contested. It may have benefits in the long term over other psychotherapies. Psychoanalytic concepts are also widely used outside the therapeutic field, for example in the interpretation of neurological findings, myths and fairy tales, cultural phenomena, philosophical perspectives such as Freudo-Marxism, and in literary criticism.
Overview
One of Freud's central claims is that the contents of the unconscious largely determine cognition and behavior, describing this as the third insult to mankind. The first was the cosmic discovery by Copernicus that the Earth revolved around the Sun, the second was the biological discovery by Darwin that humans evolved from apes, and the third psychological affront was the discovery by Freud that the ego was not even master of its own home.
Freud found that many of the drives are repressed into the unconscious, which the structural model locates in the 'id', as a result of traumatic experiences during childhood. Attempts to integrate them into the conscious perception of the ego triggers resistance. The individual 'wants' to maintain the repression through defense mechanisms—including censorship, internalized fear of punishment or of loss of love—while the affected instincts resist. An inner war rages between the forces of the id, ego, and superego and can manifest as more or less conspicuous mental disorders. Importantly, Freud did not equate the most common behavior with 'health'. "Health can only be described in metapsychological terms" (assessment of each psychic process according to the coordinates of biological drive economy, dynamics, and topology).
He discovered that the instinctive impulses are expressed in the symbols of dreams and in the symptomatic detours of neuroticism and Freudian slips. Psychoanalysis was developed in order to clarify the causes of disorders and to restore mental health by enabling the ego to become aware of the id's needs and to find realistic, self-controlled ways to satisfy them. Freud summarized this goal of his therapy as "Wo Es war, soll Ich werden" ("Where id was, there ego shall be").
Oedipus rising
Freud attached great importance to coherence of his structural model. The metapsychological specification of the functions and interlocking of the three instances was intended to ensure the full connectivity of this 'psychic apparatus' with biological sciences, in particular Darwin's theory of evolution of species, including mankind with his natural behavior, thinking ability and technological creativity. Such a model of health is indispensable for the diagnostic process (sickness can only be realized as a deviation from the optimal cooperation of all mental-organic functions), but Freud had to be modest. He came to the conclusion that he had to leave his metapsychological-based model of the soul in the unfinished state of a torso because – as he stated one last time in Moses and Monotheism – there was no well-founded primate research in the first half of 20th century.
Darwin's horde life and its abolition through the introduction of monogamy (as a political agreement between the sons who murdered the horde's polygamous forefather) embodies the evolutionary and the cultural-historical core of psychoanalysis. The aspect of violent elimination of natural horde life is decisive for Freud's Unease in Culture; his assumption of the outbreak of the Oedipus complex in human history is based on it. It led to the formulation of rules of behavior such as the prohibition of adultery and incest, and thus to the beginning of totemic cultures. These rules manifested as customs, traditions, and ritual education, some of which were altered through the intermediate stage of feudalism to modern nations, endowed with their monotheism (which centralized the diversity of totems in an omnipotent, single deity) and hierarchical power structures of military, trade, and politics (see Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego).
In Totem and Taboo (1913), Freud extended the Oedipus complex to the origins of culture. Drawing on Darwin's conjecture of a "primal horde," he proposed that a band of brothers killed and devoured their despotic father and, out of remorse and guilt, instituted the prohibitions against murder and incest that he saw as the basis of totemism, morality, and religion. He returned to the thesis in Moses and Monotheism (1939).
According to Freud, this hypothesis explains the present-day son's conflict with his father over his mother, naming this view after Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus Rex, and supplementing it with case studies such as the Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy. He also devised a hypothesis of healthy emotional development, which presupposes the natural relationships of Homo sapiens from birth and takes place in three successive stages: the oral, anal, and genital phases.
Traditional setting Psychoanalysts emphasize the importance of early childhood experience and try to overcome infantile amnesia. In a traditional Freudian setting, the patient lies on a couch, and the analyst sits just behind and out of sight. The patient is invited to express all their thoughts, feelings, and fantasies without censorship (free association). In addition to its task of strengthening the ego with its ability to think dialectically – Freud's primacy of the intellect – therapy also aims to induce transference. The patient often projects onto the analyst the parental figures internalized in his superego during early childhood. As he once did as a baby and child, he experiences again the feelings of helpless dependence, all the futile longing for love, anger, rage and urge for revenge on the failing parents but now with the possibility of processing these contents that have shaped his persona.Chessick, Richard D. 2007. The Future of Psychoanalysis. Albany: State University of New York Press. p. 125.Fromm, Erich. 1992. The Revision of Psychoanalysis. New York: Open Road. pp. 12–13. (points 1 to 6).
The term countertransference refers to the analyst's projection onto their patient. This poses a potential problem for the analyst if it remains unrecognized. When recognized and understood, countertransference can also be an important source of information about what is going on in the analytic process.Stefana, Alberto. 2017. History of Countertransference: From Freud to the British Object Relations School. London: Routledge. .