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Results for psychoanalysis On this page: Select Article Med Encyclopedia Dictionary Sci-Tech Encycl. Britannica Concise Philosophy Sports & Medicine Columbia Ency. Psychoanalysis Science Dictionary Quotes About Wikipedia Translations --------------- Or search: - The Web - Images - News - Blogs - Shopping Sponsored LinksAmerican Psychotherapy Representing the interests of psychotherapists worldwide. www.americanpsychotherapy.com Medical Encyclopedia: Psychoanalysis Also from Answers.com... Allergies Health videos on seasonal allergies, including allergy treatment options. More about Psychoanalysis: Purpose Precautions Preparation Risks Normal results Resources Definition Psychoanalysis is a form of psychotherapy used by qualified psychotherapists to treat patients who have a range of mild to moderate chronic life problems. It is related to a specific body of theories about the relationships between conscious and unconscious mental processes, and should not be used as a synonym for psychotherapy in general. Psychoanalysis is done one-onone with the patient and the analyst; it is not appropriate for group work. Description In both psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, the therapist does not tell the patient how to solve problems or offer moral judgments. The focus of treatment is exploration of the patient's mind and habitual thought patterns. Such therapy is termed "non-directed." It is also "insight-oriented," meaning that the goal of treatment is increased understanding of the sources of one's inner conflicts and emotional problems. The basic techniques of psychoanalytical treatment include: Therapist neutrality Neutrality means that the analyst does not take sides in the patient's conflicts, express feelings about the patient, or talk about his or her own life. Therapist neutrality is intended to help the patient stay focused on issues rather than be concerned with the therapist's reactions. In psychoanalysis, the patient lies on a couch facing away from the therapist. In psychodynamic psychotherapy, however, the patient and therapist usually sit in comfortable chairs facing each other. Free association Free association means that the patient talks about whatever comes into mind without censoring or editing the flow of ideas or memories. Free association allows the patient to return to earlier or more childlike emotional states ("regress"). Regression is sometimes necessary in the formation of the therapeutic alliance. It also helps the analyst to understand the recurrent patterns of conflict in the patient's life. Therapeutic alliance and transference Transference is the name that psychoanalysts use for the patient's repetition of childlike ways of relating that were learned in early life. If the therapeutic alliance has been well established, the patient will begin to transfer thoughts and feelings connected with siblings, parents, or other influential figures to the therapist. Discussing the transference helps the patient gain insight into the ways in which he or she misreads or misperceives other people in present life. Interpretation In psychoanalytic treatment, the analyst is silent as much as possible, in order to encourage the patient's free association. However, the analyst offers judiciously timed interpretations, in the form of verbal comments about the material that emerges in the sessions. The therapist uses interpretations in order to uncover the patient's resistance to treatment, to discuss the patient's transference feelings, or to confront the patient with inconsistencies. Interpretations may be either focused on present issues ("dynamic") or intended to draw connections between the patient's past and the present ("genetic"). The patient is also often encouraged to describe dreams and fantasies as sources of material for interpretation. Working through "Working through" occupies most of the work in psychoanalytic treatment after the transference has been formed and the patient has begun to acquire insights into his or her problems. Working through is a process in which the new awareness is repeatedly tested and "tried on for size" in other areas of the patient's life. It allows the patient to understand the influence of the past on his or her present situation, to accept it emotionally as well as intellectually, and to use the new understanding to make changes in present life. Working through thus helps the patient to gain some measure of control over inner conflicts and to resolve them or minimize their power. Although psychoanalytic treatment is primarily verbal, medications are sometimes used to stabilize patients with severe anxiety, depression, or other mood disorders during the analysis. The cost of either psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy is prohibitive for most patients without insurance coverage. A full course of psychoanalysis usually requires three to five weekly sessions with a psychoanalyst over a period of three to five years. A course of psychoanalytic psychotherapy involves one to three meetings per week with the therapist for two to five years. Each session or meeting typically costs between $80 and $200, depending on the locale and the experience of the therapist. The increasing reluctance of most HMOs and other managed care organizations to pay for long-term psychotherapy is one reason that these forms of treatment are losing ground to short-term methods of treatment and the use of medications to control the patient's emotions. It is also not clear that long-term psy-choanalytically oriented approaches are more beneficial than briefer therapy methods for many patients. — Rebecca J. Frey -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WebNewsImagesShoppingPage Tools ▼ Print this page Send to friendPersonalize Library Arts Business Entertainment Food Government Health Legal Leisure Military People Reference Religion Science Shopping Sports Travel Words Zoology More... Dictionary: psy·cho·a·nal·y·sis (sī'kō-ə-năl'ĭ-sĭs) n., pl. -ses (-sēz'). The method of psychological therapy originated by Sigmund Freud in which free association, dream interpretation, and analysis of resistance and transference are used to explore repressed or unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts, in order to free psychic energy for mature love and work. The theory of personality developed by Freud that focuses on repression and unconscious forces and includes the concepts of infantile sexuality, resistance, transference, and division of the psyche into the id, ego, and superego. Psychotherapy incorporating this method and theory. psychoanalyst psy'cho·an'a·lyst (-ăn'ə-lĭst) n. psychoanalytic psy'cho·an'a·lyt'ic (-ăn'ə-lĭt'ĭk) or psy'cho·an'a·lyt'i·cal (-ĭ-kəl) adj. psychoanalytically psy'cho·an'a·lyt'i·cal·ly adv. Sci-Tech Encyclopedia: Psychoanalysis Psychoanalysis may be defined as (1) a psychological theory; (2) a form of psychotherapy, especially for the treatment of neurotic and character or personality disorders; and (3) a method for investigating psychological phenomena. Psychoanalysis was created and developed by Sigmund Freud, who presented his method, clinical observations, and theory in Interpretation of Dreams and other major works, including The Psychopathology of Everyday Life and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, as well as in many of his case studies. Psychoanalytic theory Generally, psychoanalysis is concerned with the causal role of wishes and beliefs in human life. More specifically, it attempts to explain mental or behavioral phenomena that do not appear to make sense as the effects of unconscious wishes and beliefs. Such phenomena include dreams, disturbances in functioning such as slips of the tongue or pen and transient forgetting, and neurotic symptoms. Typically, unconscious wishes and beliefs are constituents of conflicts. The term unconscious in psychoanalysis does not mean simply that mental contents are out of awareness. Its psychodynamic meaning is that the person does not want to be aware of these contents, and takes active steps to avoid being aware of them. A fundamental hypothesis of psychoanalysis is that because a mental entity is dynamically unconscious it has the causal power to produce the phenomena that are of interest to psychoanalysis. At first, the dynamic unconscious was thought to consist of traumatic memories. Later, it was believed to consist of impulses or wishes—especially sexual (and aggressive) impulses or wishes. Psychoanalysis now emphasizes that the dynamic unconscious consists of fantasies, which have a history reaching back to childhood. These fantasies are internal scenarios in which sexual (and aggressive) wishes are imagined as fulfilled. Psychoanalysis is distinct in attributing causal powers to unconscious sexual wishes. Such attribution depends on extending the meaning of sexual to encompass the quest for sensual pleasure in childhood (so-called infantile sexuality) and choices of objects and aims. One theme that is thought to have particular importance is the Oedipus complex, in which the child rivals one parent in seeking sensual gratifications of various kinds from the other parent. When an unconscious fantasy is activated, it manifests itself in conscious mental states or in actions—importantly, in emotions; in interpretations of the significance of events or states of affairs; in attributions of motives to others; and in daydreams, dreams, and neurotic symptoms. Unconscious fantasies, as distinct from both conscious reality-oriented imagining and conscious day-dreaming, are constructed when imagination functions under very special conditions. This emphasis on fantasy underscores the fact that psychoanalysis gives priority to the relation between wishes (including wishes a person knows could not conceivably be gratified in reality) and imagination (functioning under very special conditions). Psychotherapy Free association is the method of psychoanalysis. Patients are encouraged not to talk about some particular problem or aspect of their lives but rather to suspend any conscious purposive organization of what they say, speaking freely. Both psychoanalyst and patient follow the patient's productions: conscious purposes are replaced by unconscious purposes, which, under these conditions, can determine the direction of the patient's mental processes with less interference. Interventions are predominantly interpretative; psychoanalysts do not seek primarily to tell their patients what to do, to educate them about the world, to influence their values, or to reassure them in one way or another that everything is or will be all right. Psychoanalysts look for patterns in what each patient says and for signs of feelings of which the patient is more or less unaware. They then engage their patients (who are increasingly aware of these patterns and able to experience and articulate these feelings) in an inquiry about the reasons for them or motives behind them. The focus is on what the patients do not know—and do not want to know—about themselves and their inner life, including strategies for avoiding such knowledge and the consequences of these strategies. The goal of psychoanalytic psychotherapy is to extend the realm of what patients permit themselves to experience. It tries to mitigate the misery that patients with a neurotic, character, or personality disorder inflict on themselves. The case-study method is characteristic of psychoanalytic research. The arguments that can be used in case studies are analogy (the use of familiar or homely models in which postulated causes and mechanisms can be shown to exist); consilience (the convergence of inferences from different kinds of information on a common cause); and abduction (inference to the best explanation). See also Psychotherapy. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: psychoanalysis Method of treating mental disorders that emphasizes the probing of unconscious mental processes. It is based on the psychoanalytic theory devised by Sigmund Freud in Vienna in the late 19th and early 20th century. It calls for patients to engage in free association of ideas, speaking to therapists about anything that comes to mind. Dreams and slips of the tongue are examined as a key to the workings of the unconscious mind, and the "work" of therapy is to uncover the tensions existing between the instinctual drive of the id, the perceptions and actions of the ego, and the censorship imposed by the morality of the superego. Careful attention is paid to early childhood experiences (especially those with a sexual dimension), the memory of which may have been repressed because of guilt or trauma; recalling and analyzing these experiences is thought to help free patients from the anxiety and neuroses caused by repression as well as from more serious illnesses known as psychoses (see neurosis, psychosis). Some of Freud's early associates, notably Carl Gustav Jung and Alfred Adler, rejected his theories on many points and devised alternative methods of analysis. Other important figures in psychoanalysis, including Erik Erikson, Karen Horney, and Erich Fromm, accepted the basic Freudian framework but contributed their own additions or modifications. For more information on psychoanalysis, visit Britannica.com. Philosophy Dictionary: psychoanalysis The method of therapy for psychological disorders pioneered by Freud. The method relies on an interpretation of what a patient says while ‘freely associating’ or reporting what comes to mind in connection with topics suggested by the therapist. The interpretation proceeds according to the scheme favoured by the analyst, and reveals ideas dominating the unconscious, but previously inadmissible to the conscious mind of the subject. When these are confronted, improvement can be expected. The widespread practice of psychoanalysis is not matched by established data on such rates of improvement. Philosophically, the unconscious mind postulated by psychoanalysis is controversial, since it requires thinking in terms of a partitioned mind and applying a mental vocabulary (intentions, desires, repression) to a part to which we have no conscious access. The problem is whether this merely uses a harmless spatial metaphor of the mind, or whether it involves a philosophical misunderstanding of mental ascription. Other philosophical reservations about psychoanalysis concern the apparently arbitrary and unfalsifiable nature of the interpretative schemes employed. Works such as Adolf Grünbaum's Foundations of Psychoanalysis (1984) effectively challenge the scientific basis of psychoanalytic interpretations, while there is accumulating evidence that therapists, including Freud himself, are responsible for many of the reports of repressed memories or fantasies that patients are induced to make, or described as having made. However, such schemes have been used to explain otherwise puzzling aspects of all parts of human life, but especially dreams, rituals, myths, and literature, and some philosophers, especially in France, have seen psychoanalysis as a key to all the theory of human nature. See also jung. Sports Science and Medicine: psychoanalysis A method of treating mental disorders pioneered by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), which employs the techniques of free association, interpretation, and dream analysis to reveal and release repressed fears so that they can be effectively dealt with. Columbia Encyclopedia: psychoanalysis, name given by Sigmund Freud to a system of interpretation and therapeutic treatment of psychological disorders. Psychoanalysis began after Freud studied (1885–86) with the French neurologist J. M. Charcot in Paris and became convinced that hysteria was caused not by organic symptoms in the nervous system but by emotional disturbance. Later, in collaboration with Viennese physician Josef Breuer, Freud wrote two papers on hysteria (1893, 1895) that were the precursors of his vast body of psychoanalytic theory. Freud used his psychoanalytic method primarily to treat clients suffering from a variety of mild mental disorders classified until recently as neuroses (see neurosis). Freud was joined by an increasing number of students and physicians, among whom were C. G. Jung and Alfred Adler. Both made significant contributions, but by 1913 ceased to be identified with the main body of psychoanalysts because of theoretical disagreements with Freud's strong emphasis on sexual motivation. Other analysts, including Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan, also have contributed greatly to the field. Psychoanalysis and its theoretical underpinnings have had an enormous influence on modern psychology and psychiatry and in fields as diverse as literary theory, anthropology, and film criticism. Psychoanalytic Therapy and Theory The basic postulate of psychoanalysis, the concept of a dynamic unconscious mind, grew out of Freud's observation that the physical symptoms of hysterical patients tended to disappear after apparently forgotten material was made conscious (see hysteria). He saw the unconscious as an area of great psychic activity, which influenced personality and behavior but operated with material not subject to recall through normal mental processes. Freud postulated that there were a number of defense mechanisms—including repression, reaction-formation, regression, displacement, and rationalization—that protect the conscious mind from those aspects of reality it may find difficult to accept. The major defense mechanism is repression, which induced a “forgetfulness” for harsh realities. Observing the relationship between psychoneurosis and repressed memories, Freud made conscious recognition of these forgotten experiences the foundation of psychoanalytic therapy. Hypnosis was the earliest method used to probe the unconscious, but due to its limited effectiveness, it was soon discarded in favor of free association (see also hypnotism). Dreams, which Freud interpreted as symbolic wish fulfillments, were considered a primary key to the unconscious, and their analysis was an important part of Freudian therapy. To clarify the operation of the human psyche, Freud and his followers introduced a vast body of psychoanalytic theory. In considering the human personality as a whole, Freud divided it into three functional parts: id, ego, and superego. He saw the id as the deepest level of the unconscious, dominated by the pleasure principle, with its object the immediate gratification of instinctual drives. The superego, originating in the child through an identification with parents, and in response to social pressures, functions as an internal censor to repress the urges of the id. The ego, on the other hand, is seen as a part of the id modified by contact with the external world. It is a mental agent mediating among three contending forces: the outside demands of social pressure or reality, libidinal demands for immediate satisfaction arising from the id, and the moral demands of the superego. Although considered only partly conscious, the ego constitutes the major part of what is commonly referred to as consciousness. Freud asserted that conflicts between these often-opposing components of the human mind are crucial factors in the development of neurosis. Psychoanalysis focused on early childhood, postulating that many of the conflicts which arise in the human mind develop in the first years of a person's life. Freud demonstrated this in his theory of psychosexuality, in which the libido (sexual energy) of the infant progressively seeks outlet through different body zones (oral, anal, phallic, and genital) during the first five to six years of life. Criticisms of and Changes in Freudian Psychoanalysis Orthodox Freudian psychoanalysis was challenged in the 1920s by Otto Rank, Sandor Ferenczi, and Wilhelm Reich; later, in the 1930s, by Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, and Harry Stack Sullivan. These critics of Freud stressed the interpersonal aspect of the analyst-patient relationship (transference), and placed more emphasis on the processes of the ego. Despite a number of detractors and a lack of controlled research, Freudian psychoanalysis remained the most widely used method of psychotherapy until at least the 1950s. Today, Freud's method is only one among many types of psychotherapy used in psychiatry. Many objections have been leveled against traditional psychoanalysis, both for its methodological rigidity and for its lack of theoretical rigor. A number of modern psychologists have pointed out that traditional psychoanalysis relies too much on ambiguities for its data, such as dreams and free associations. Without empirical evidence, Freudian theories often seem weak, and ultimately fail to initiate standards for treatment. Critics have also pointed out that Freud's theoretical models arise from a homogeneous sample group—almost exclusively upper-class Austrian women living in the sexually repressed society of the late 19th cent. Such a sample, many psychologists contend, made Freud's focus on sex as a determinant of personality too emphatic. Other problems with traditional psychoanalysis are related to Freud's method of analysis. For Freudian analysis to reach its intended conclusions, the psychoanalyst required frequent sessions with a client over a period of years: today, the prohibitive costs of such methods compels most to seek other forms of psychiatric care. Traditional psychoanalysis involved a distancing between therapist and client—the two did not even face each other during the sessions. In recent years, many clients have preferred a more interactive experience with the therapist. The subject matter of Freudian analysis has also fallen into disuse, even among those who still practice psychoanalysis: early childhood receives much less emphasis, and there is generally more focus on problems the client is currently experiencing. Bibliography See the works of Freud; A. Bernstein and G. Warner, An Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis (1981); J. Reppen, ed., Beyond Freud (1984); C. G. Jung, The Collected Works, Vol. 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis (tr. 1985); S. Marcus, Freud and the Culture of Psychoanalysis (1984, repr. 1987); O. A. Olsen and S. Koppe, The Psychoanalysis of Freud (1988); C. Badcock, Essential Freud (1988); E. Kurzweil, The Freudian Establishments (1989). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Psychoanalysis: Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud himself provided the most complete, and now most classical definition for his invention, psychoanalysis: "Psycho-analysis is the name (1) of a procedure for investigating mental processes which are almost inaccessible in any other way, (2) of a method (based upon that investigation) for the treatment of neurotic disorders and (3) of a collection of psychological information obtained along those lines, which is gradually being accumulated into a new scientific discipline" (1923a [1922], p. 235). This definition, intended for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, is still widely used today by many psychoanalytic training institutes. Freud also wrote that the best way to understand psychoanalysis was to study its history. Its origins could be traced to the young Viennese doctor's medical practice. He frequently treated "nervous" patients, for the most part described as suffering from "hysteria," a field he came to specialize in after his return from Paris and his work assisting Jean Martin Charcot. He needed to heal these patients and develop a clientele large enough to support his growing family, even though therapeutic procedures at the time were practically nonexistent. The available techniques—electric shock, isolation in medical clinics, and sedatives—were soon abandoned. Hypnosis appeared to him at first to produce miraculous results, but it turned out to be a dead end, and he decided to apply the "cathartic method" that his mentor, Joseph Breuer, had discovered during the treatment of the patient known as Anna O. Taking the symptom as its starting point, this method strove to have the patient recall the circumstances of its first occurrence, and a successful outcome depended on this recollection by means of talk, which was supposed to make the symptom disappear. Freud then discovered the "resistance" that patients would put up during the search for pathogenic "primal scenes," as if they wanted to keep the origin of their illness secret. The material that was "repressed" in this way always involved old memories associated with specific events related to the earliest sexual activity of children. His suggestion that such a sexuality even existed greatly shocked many of his contemporaries. His patients soon began drawing his attention to their dreams, which he encouraged them to recount. In keeping with his belief in determinism, Freud concluded that dreams fulfilled a function—the safeguarding of sleep through the fulfillment of wishes that had been ignored by consciousness—and consequently had an "unconscious" content, a meaning that could be deciphered. The analysis of resistance and the interpretation of dreams, together with the method of "free association," became the pillars of the psychotherapy to which Freud, in 1896, gave the name "psychoanalysis." The term appeared for the first time in an article written in French, "Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses" (1896a). By the first years of the twentieth century, the principal features of psychoanalytic treatment that still define it at the beginning of the twenty-first had been established: The patient was placed on a couch and the therapist remained out of sight. The patient was asked to say whatever came to mind. Sessions were fairly long, frequent, and expensive, so that the treatment would become an important part of the patient's life and so that the bond with the psychoanalyst—the "transference"—would become the principal engine of the attempt to reconstruct the past and weaken the defenses the patient had set up against the pressure from contradictory drives. But the initial therapeutic successes were not as consistent or as long-lasting as Freud had hoped. The transference could become hostile and give rise to a "negative therapeutic reaction," leading to the discontinuation of treatment or its indefinite extension. Freud was less a therapist than a researcher, something he often recognized; it was primarily his students and successors who introduced improvements to his methods, or different but connected methods, to make the "therapeutic" aspect of psychoanalysis more effective. Thus Carl G. Jung and Hermine von Hug-Hellmuth worked with psychotic patients, and Anna Freud and Melanie Klein with children. Otto Rank and Sándor Ferenczi sought to improve psychoanalytic therapy and make it more effective. They introduced so-called "active" techniques and tried to shorten the length of therapy, even exploring a form of "mutual analysis." Traces of these early initiatives can be found in psychotherapeutic methods developed years later. Similarly, the extension of psychotherapy to patients presenting problems of psychosis or addiction, and the development of group analysis and psychodrama all tended to point up the therapeutic value of psychoanalysis. Some psychoanalysts sought to render their approach more effective by forging links with the neurosciences. Following Freud, however, who quipped about the profession's "furor sanandi," other psychoanalysts emphasized the research implications of treatment. Thus Jacques Lacan, who in 1957 spoke of curing patients as merely an "extra" benefit of psychoanalysis, and who in 1964, when he founded theÉcole freudienne de Paris, described training analysis as "pure"—as opposed to simply "therapeutic"—psychoanalysis, clearly represents the tendency that embraces the third of Freud's three basic definitions of psychoanalysis. In his daily practice, however, Freud never differentiated between what he experienced and what he theorized later. His letters to Wilhelm Fliess allow us to follow, almost day by day, the theory-building that turned psychoanalysis into the "depth psychology" Freud hoped would supplant academic psychology. A work of construction then—but also of deconstruction—Freud considered his ideas to be superstructures whose existence was necessarily ephemeral, and anticipated new discoveries better adapted to the knowledge obtained from clinical practice. A first model, developed in 1900, which described a psychic apparatus formed of three agencies—the unconscious, preconscious, and conscious—was replaced in 1923 by another conceptual scheme comprising the id, the ego, and the superego. And while Freud remained firmly committed to the Oedipus complex, he had, over a period of forty years of work, fleshed out the speculative aspects of his metapsychology with new concepts that improved and sometimes reversed his earlier hypotheses: narcissism, the death instinct, the phallic stage, the splitting of the ego. Alfred Adler, in 1911, and Jung, in 1913, made their final breaks with Freud over theoretical disagreements and formed their own schools. The first psychoanalytic theory to be developed that broke with Freud's theories while also claiming to further the Freudian tradition was Melanie Klein's, developed between 1930 and 1962. Klein radically revised the Freudian view of the first moments of the formation of the mental apparatus, on the basis of her clinical experience with very young children and her interest in psychoses. Her theoretical model invoked very early stages she referred to as "depressive" or "paranoid-schizoid" positions, and she held that the Oedipus complex originated at a much earlier age than Freud thought. Her opposition to Anna Freud, who insisted on strict fidelity to the spirit and letter of her father's theories, gave rise to several important "controversies" (1941-1945) that determined the orientation of the British Psycho-Analytical Society after the Second World War. Following Klein, Donald Winnicott, Wilfred Bion, and Ronald Fairbairn helped develop British psychoanalytical theory and practice. In the United States a number of derivative psychoanalytic theories came into being, some of which parted ways with classical Freudian theory. The theory of ego-psychology was introduced by Heinz Hartmann, Ernst Kris, and Rudolph Loewenstein, and was for years the major reference point of American psychoanalysis. Heinz Kohut developed a theory of narcissism, and Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan were cofounders of a "culturalist" approach. Erik Erikson's work was also notable. In France, Jacques Lacan, under the banner of the "return to Freud" in November 1955, proposed new models that in his view could better account for the constitution of the "subject" and the relationship between the subject and the unconscious. The three categories of the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic; the primacy of the phallus; the object a; Borromean knots; and mathemes were so many milestones in an evolving theory that Lacan developed week by week, from 1954 to 1981, in his famous seminars. His idiosyncratic use of the findings of modern linguistics, inspired by Ferdinand de Saussure, of structuralism, and of logical and mathematical models, enabled him to make an audience of even communities like the Catholic Church and the Marxist orthodoxy, which had previously rejected "Freudian doctrine" as "unscientific." Whether or not psychoanalysis is a science has been debated for years, and the issue reappears regularly in the news. For epistemologists like Karl Popper and a host of other critics, the statements made by psychoanalysis cannot be considered scientific since they cannot be "falsified" and because the theory cannot be "refuted." For Freud, the scientific status of his theory was never in doubt, and he considered his metapsychological hypotheses no more implausible than those of contemporary physics. Psychoanalysis, as far as he was concerned, was a "natural science" ("Naturwissenschaft"). Despite holding a position deemed by some close to "scientism," Freud clearly distinguished his belief in a scientific ideal and the consistency of his hypotheses concerning the unconscious from a Weltanschauung, a "vision of the world" whose totalizing tendencies and illusory nature he feared. In The Question of Lay Analysis, he wrote: "Science, as you know, is not a revelation; long after its beginnings it still lacks the attributes of definiteness, immutability and infallibility for which human thought so deeply longs. But such as it is, it is all that we can have" (1926e, p. 191). Freud also insisted on the importance of psychoanalysis as a cultural phenomenon and a special instrument for studying and understanding other cultural phenomena. On July 5, 1910, he wrote to Jung: "I am becoming more and more convinced of the cultural value of psychoanalysis, and I long for the lucid mind that will draw from it the justified inferences for philosophy and sociology" (p. 340). His letters to Wilhelm Fliess already illustrate the extent to which his psychological discoveries provided new insights for the understanding of literature and visual art, and how their study provided him with new ideas or proofs of the correctness of his views. It was Sophocles who provided Freud with the name for his "Oedipus complex," discovered during his self-analysis in October 1897. In 1913 he indicated the fields of knowledge he felt would benefit (1913j) from psychoanalytic concepts. Aside from psychology, he listed the science of language, philosophy, biology, the history of the development of civilization, aesthetics, sociology, and pedagogy. He confirmed this interaction in the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis: "In the work of psychoanalysis links are formed with numbers of other mental sciences, the investigation of which promises results of the greatest value: links with mythology and philology, with folklore, with social psychology and the theory of religion. You will not be surprised to hear that a periodical has grown up on psychoanalytic soil whose sole aim is to foster these links. This periodical is known as Imago, founded in 1912 and edited by Hanns Sachs and Otto Rank. In all these links the share of psychoanalysis is in the first instance that of giver and only to a less extent that of receiver" (1916-1917a, p. 167-68). Despite the charge that Freudian concepts cannot be applied outside the framework of the treatment and notwithstanding the superficial way they have indeed too often sometimes been used, the fact is that "applied psychoanalysis" has profoundly modified our view of literature and the fine arts, of biography, and of sociological and political realities. Freud set the example by the way he approached Wilhelm Jensen's story "Gradiva," Leonardo da Vinci's life, and Michelangelo's sculpture, to mention only a few of his contributions. But on several occasions he expressed his reservations about the value of the psychobiographies produced by some of his followers and successors. Toward the end of his life his clinical work took a secondary position to his writings on the great problems of religion and culture: The Future of an Illusion (1927c), Civilization and Its Discontents (1930a [1929]), and especially his last work, Moses and Monotheism (1939a [1934-1938]), which expands upon the anthropological ideas he had extensively covered in Totem and Taboo (1912-13a). Later, the spread of Freudian ideas attracted the interest of writers, artists, and critics, who made use of them to enrich their own work. The Surrealists were among the first, but novelists, painters, and dramatists borrowed from psychoanalysis as well. Created at the same time as cinematography, psychoanalysis has inspired filmmakers from the early days. One has only to think of Secrets of a Soul (Geheimnisse einer Seele), the film G. W. Pabst made in 1926 in spite of Freud's reservations; or of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Spellbound and Vertigo; or of Freud, the Secret Passion, by John Huston, prepared with the help of Jean-Paul Sartre and released in 1962, in which Montgomery Clift plays the role of Freud; or, for that matter, of the comic treatment of psychoanalysis by Woody Allen. Throughout the twentieth century, the discoveries of psychoanalysis and its theory of the unconscious have profoundly modified the rules mankind has established concerning its behavior and sexual taboos, its relation to guilt, to femininity, and more generally to other people, about whom a whole new unconscious aspect was now apprehended. Obviously, however, the wide dissemination and renown of psychoanalysis were themselves the product of the twentieth century. Psychoanalysis was inspired and carried along by that century, with its excesses, its political ideologies, its economic and religious ups and downs, and above all, its terrible conflicts, which despite all claims to civilized behavior mobilized the darkest and most barbaric of human impulses just as Freud had understood and feared (1915b, 1933b [1932]). In so many ways—the liberalization of behavior, the advancement of the status of women (both inside and outside feminist movements and in spite of their virulent criticisms of Freudianism), the dawning recognition of sexual minorities (even though in Freudian theory their preferences have been explained as arrested libidinal development and more or less archaic fixations), a different approach to the subject and its relation to itself and the other—psychoanalysis has become a part of everyday life throughout the so-called "Western" world and is not about to simply disappear, despite all the wild swings of fashion. Its expansion toward other cultural sensibilities, like the multiplication of the often contradictory theories and techniques that claim allegiance to it, as demonstrated by this Dictionary, show that psychoanalysis has never been a dogma or the kind of closed theory caricatured by dishonest critics. In his own time Freud defined those "cornerstones," which seemed to him to provide the foundation that his successors would trace back to him: "The assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of resistance and repression, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex—these constitute the principal subject-matter of psycho-analysis and the foundations of its theory. No one who cannot accept them all should count himself a psycho-analyst" (1923a [1922], p. 247). Nothing has really changed regarding the basic principles, in spite of the considerable diversity found in theoretical research and methods of practice, which has enriched the great network of the global psychoanalytic movement. The recent rapid development of the neurosciences does not signal any decline in the value of the listening procedure that psychoanalysis has offered for more than a century in its attempt to understand and treat mental suffering. Apparently contradictory theoretical systems will eventually intersect and enrich each other, and the pessmism of the Cassandras can be answered with Freud's remarks, written in 1914: "At least a dozen times in recent years, in reports of the proceedings of certain congresses and scientific bodies or in reviews of certain publications, I have read that now psychoanalysis is dead, defeated and disposed of once and for all. The best answer to all this would be in the terms of Mark Twain's telegram to the newspaper which had falsely published news of his death: 'Report of my death is grossly exaggerated"' (1914d, p. 35). Bibliography Freud, Sigmund. (1912-13a). Totem and taboo. SE, 13: 1-161. ——. (1913j). The claims of psycho-analysis to scientific interest. SE, 13: 163-190. ——. (1915b). Thoughts for the times on war and death. SE, 14: 273-300. ——. (1916-17a [1915-17]). Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. Parts I and II. SE, 15-16. ——. (1923a [1922]). Two encyclopaedia articles. Psycho-analysis. SE, 18: 234-255. ——. (1926e). The question of lay analysis. SE, 20: 177-250. ——. (1930a [1929]). Civilization and its discontents. SE, 21: 57-145. ——. (1933b [1932]). Why war? (Einstein and Freud). SE, 22: 195-215. ——. (1939a [1934-38]). Moses and monotheism: Three essays. SE, 23: 1-137. Freud, Sigmund, and Jung, Carl. (1974a [1906-13]). The Freud/Jung letters: The correspondence between Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung (William McGuire, Ed., and Ralph Manheim and R.F.C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mijolla, Alain de. (1996). Psychoanalysts and their history. International Psychoanalysis: The Newsletter of the IPA, 5 (1), 25-28. —ALAINDE MIJOLLA Science Dictionary: psychoanalysis A method of treating mental illness, originating with Sigmund Freud, in which a psychiatrist (analyst) helps a patient discover and confront the causes of the illness. Many psychiatrists believe that these causes are buried deep in the unconscious of the patient and can be brought to the surface through such techniques as hypnosis and the analysis of dreams. Psychoanalysis emphasizes that mental illness usually originates in repressed sexual desires or traumas in childhood. Psychoanalysis is sometimes simply called analysis. Quotes About: Psychoanalysis Quotes: "Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it -- they should, because they put it all in beforehand." - Saul Bellow "The human mind is indeed a cave swarming with strange forms of life, most of them unconscious and unilluminated. Unless we can understand something as to how the motives that issue from this obscurity are generated, we can hardly hope to foresee or control them." - Charles Horton Cooley "Psychoanalysis can unravel some of the forms of madness; it remains a stranger to the sovereign enterprise of unreason. It can neither limit nor transcribe, nor most certainly explain, what is essential in this enterprise." - Michel Foucault "The analytic psychotherapist thus has a threefold battle to wage -- in his own mind against the forces which seek to drag him down from the analytic level; outside the analysis, against opponents who dispute the importance he attaches to the sexual instinctual forces and hinder him from making use of them in his scientific technique; and inside the analysis, against his patients, who at first behave like opponents but later on reveal the overvaluation of sexual life which dominates them, and who try to make him captive to their socially untamed passion." - Sigmund Freud "Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient's ego freedom to decide one way or another." - Sigmund Freud "Psychoanalysis cannot be considered a method of education if by education we mean the topiary art of clipping a tree into a beautiful artificial shape. But those who have a higher conception of education will prize most the method of cultivating a tree so that it fulfils to perfection its own natural conditions of growth." - Carl Jung See more famous quotes about Psychoanalysis Wikipedia: psychoanalysis Part of a series of articles on Psychoanalysis Constructs Psychosexual development Psychosocial development Conscious • Preconscious • Unconscious Id, ego, and super-ego Libido • Drive Transference • Sublimation • Resistance Important Figures Sigmund Freud • Carl Jung Alfred Adler • Otto Rank Anna Freud • Margaret Mahler Karen Horney • Jacques Lacan Ronald Fairbairn • Melanie Klein Harry Stack Sullivan Erik Erikson • Nancy Chodorow Susan Sutherland Isaacs Ernest Jones • Heinz Kohut Important works The Interpretation of Dreams Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" Civilization and Its Discontents Schools of Thought Self psychology • Lacanian Analytical psychology • Object relations Interpersonal • Relational Attachment • Ego psychology Psychology Portal Psychoanalysis today comprises several interlocking theories concerning the functioning of the mind; the term also refers to a specific type of treatment where the analyst, upon hearing the thoughts of the analysand (analytic patient), formulates and then explains the unconscious basis for the patient's symptoms and character problems. Unconscious functioning was first described by Sigmund Freud, who modified his theories several times over a period of almost 50 years of attempting to treat patients who suffered with mental problems. During psychoanalytic treatment, the patient tells the analyst various thoughts and feelings. The analyst listens carefully, formulates, then intervenes to attempt to help the patient develop insight into unconscious factors causing the problems. The specifics of the analyst's interventions typically include confronting and clarifying the patient's pathological defenses, wishes and guilt. Through the analysis of resistance (unconscious barriers to treatment), and transference to the analyst of expectations, psychoanalysis aims to unearth wishes and emotions from prior unresolved conflicts, in order to help the patient perceive and resolve lingering problems. Although criticized since its inception (See the recent criticism), psychoanalysis has been thriving as a research tool into childhood development (cf. the journal The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child), and has developed into a flexible, effective treatment for certain mental disturbances (see Wallerstein's (2000) Forty-Two Lives in Treatment: A Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy). In the 1960s, Freud's early (1905) thoughts on the childhood development of female sexuality were challenged; this challenge led to the development of a variety of understandings of female sexual development (See Psychoanalysis#Theories of psychoanalysis), many of which modified the timing and normality of several of Freud's theories (which had been gleaned from the treatment of women with mental disturbances). [1] followed Karen Horney's studies of societal pressures that influence the development of women. Most contemporary North American psychoanalysts employ theories that, while based on those of Sigmund Freud, include many modifications of theory and practice developed since his death in 1939. For a free bibliography and abstracts of all 12 major analytic journals (from about 1920 through the present) and abstracts of the 24 volumes of Freud's writings, see www.pep-web.org. Today, there are approximately 35 training institutes for psychoanalysis in the United States accredited by the American Psychoanalytic Association (see www.apsa.org) which is a component organization of the International Psychoanalytical Association, and there are over 3,000 graduated psychoanalysts practicing in the United States. The International Psychoanalytical Association accredits psychoanalytic training centers throughout the rest of the world, including countries such as Serbia, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and many others, as well as about 6 institutes directly in the U.S., and is a fast-growing organization. Origins Psychoanalysis was devised in Vienna in the 1890s by Sigmund Freud, a neurologist interested in finding an effective treatment for patients with neurotic or hysterical symptoms. Freud became sensitized to the existence of mental processes that were not conscious as a result of his neurological consulting job at the Kinderkrankenhaus (Children's Hospital), where he noticed that many aphasic children had no organic cause for their symptoms. He wrote a monograph about this, called, "On Aphasia." He also became aware of the experimental treatment, a combination of hypnotism and "catharsis" done by "abreaction", his older mentor and colleague, Dr. Josef Breuer, was using to treat the now famous patient, Anna O. In the late 1880s, Freud obtained a grant to study with Jean-Martin Charcot, the famed neurologist and syphilologist, at the Salpetriere in Paris. Dr. Charcot had become interested in patients who had symptoms that mimicked general paresis, the psychotic illness that occurs due to tertiary syphilis. Charcot had found that many patients experienced paralyses, pains, coughs, and a variety of other symptoms with no demonstrable physical etiology (cause). Prior to Charcot's work, women were thought to have a wandering uterus (the name hysteria means this in Greek). But Freud learned that men could have psychosomatic symptoms as well. As a result of talking with patients, Freud learned that the majority complained of sexual problems, especially coitus interruptus as birth control, which surprised him greatly. He first suspected their problems stemmed from cultural restrictions on sexual expression, and devised what today is called "topographic theory," in 1895. In this theory, which he later more or less discarded in 1923, unacceptable sexual wishes were repressed into the "System Unconscious" unconscious due to "society's" condemnation of premarital sexual activity, and this repression created anxiety. Freud also discovered what most of us take for granted today: that dreams were symbolic and specific to the dreamer. Often, dreams give clues to unconscious conflicts, and for this reason, Freud referred to dreams as the "royal road to the Unconscious." After several theoretical modifications, the discovery of narcissism in 1915, and the study of paranoia, masochism, and depression in 1917, Freud eventually reorganized his data into what became known as structural theory in a small book called The Ego and the Id in 1923. This new theory, which addressed the cause of neurotic symptoms — phobias, compulsions, obsessions, depressions, and "hysterical" conversions — amongst others, suggested that such problems were created by conflicts among various wishes and guilt, which produced anxiety. To handle the anxiety, the mind forgot or repressed certain conflicting thoughts. In other words, now he felt that anxiety produced repression, not the other way around. Theories Wikinews has related news: Dr. Joseph Merlino on sexuality, insanity, Freud, fetishes and apathyThe predominant psychoanalytic theories include Conflict Theory, which theorizes that emotional symptoms and character traits are complex solutions to intrapsychic conflict. See Brenner (2006), Psychoanalysis: Mind and Meaning, New York: Psychoanalytic Quarterly Press. This revision of Freud's structural theory (Freud, 1923, 1926) dispenses with the concepts of a fixed id, ego and superego, and instead posits unconscious and conscious conflict among wishes (dependant, controlling, sexual, and aggressive), guilt and shame, emotions (especially anxiety and depressive affect), and defensive operations that shut off from consciousness some aspect of the others. Moreover, healthy functioning (adaptive) is also determined, to a great extent, by resolutions of conflict. A major goal of modern conflict theorist analysts is to attempt to change the balance of conflict through making aspects of the less adaptive solutions (also called compromise formations) conscious so that they can be rethought, and more adaptive solutions found. Current theoreticians following Brenner's many suggestions (see especially Brenner's 1982 book, "The Mind in Conflict") include Sandor Abend, MD (Abend, Porder, & Willick, (1983), Borderline Patients: Clinical Perspectives), Jacob Arlow (Arlow and Brenner (1964), Psychoanalytic Concepts and the Structural Theory), and Jerome Blackman (2003), 101 Defenses: How the Mind Shields Itself). Conflict theory is the prevalent analytic theory taught in psychoanalytic institutes, throughout the United States, accredited by the American Psychoanalytic Association. Ego Psychology, which has a long history. Begun by Freud in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926), the theory was refined by Hartmann, Loewenstein, and Kris in a series of papers and books from 1939 through the late 1960s. Leo Bellak picked up the work from there. This series of constructs, parallelling some of cognitive theory, includes the notions of autonomous ego functions: mental functions not dependant, at least in origin, on intrapsychic conflict. Such functions include: sensory perception, motor control, symbolic thought, logical thought, speech, abstraction, integration (synthesis), orientation, concentration, judgment about danger, reality testing, adaptive ability, executive decision-making, hygiene, and self-preservation. Freud noted inhibition as a way the mind may interfere with any of these functions to avoid painful emotions. Hartmann (1950s) pointed out that there may be delays or deficits in such functions. Frosch (1964) described differences in those people who demonstrated damage to their relationship to reality, but who seemed able to test it. Deficits in the capacity to organize thought are sometimes referred to as blocking or loose associations (Bleuler), and are characteristic of the schizophrenias. Deficits in abstraction ability and self-preservation also suggest psychosis in adults. Deficits in orientation and sensorium are often indicative of a medical illness affecting the brain (and therefore, autonomous ego functions). Deficits in certain ego functions are routinely found in severely sexually or physically abused children, where powerful affects generated throughout childhood seem to have eroded some functional development. Ego strengths, later described by Kernberg (1975), include the capacities to control oral, sexual and destructive impulses; to tolerate painful affects without falling apart; and to prevent the eruption into consciousness of bizarre symbolic fantasy. Defensive activity, which shuts certain conflictual thoughts, fantasies, and sensations out of consciousness, is also sometimes included here, although defensive operations are different from autonomous functions. Nevertheless, the term "ego defense" has become common. Object relations theory, which attempts to explain vicissitudes of human relationships through a study of how internal representations of self and of others are structured. The clinical problems that suggest object relations problems (usually developmental delays throughout life) include disturbances in an individual's capacity to feel warmth, empathy, trust, sense of security, identity stability, consistent emotional closeness, and stability in relationships with chosen other human beings. (It is not suggested that one should trust everyone, for example). Concepts regarding internal representations (also sometimes termed, "introjects," "self and object representations," or "internalizations of self and other") although often attributed to Melanie Klein, were actually first mentioned by Sigmund Freud in his early concepts of drive theory (1905, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality). Freud's 1917 paper "Mourning and Melancholia", for example, hypothesized that unresolved grief was caused by the survivor's internalized image of the deceased becoming fused with that of the survivor, and then the survivor shifting unacceptable anger toward the deceased onto the now complex self image. Vamik Volkan, in "Linking Objects and Linking Phenomena," expanded on Freud's thoughts on this, describing the syndromes of "Established pathological mourning" vs. "reactive depression" based on similar dynamics. Melanie Klein's hypotheses regarding internalizations during the first year of life, leading to paranoid and depressive positions, were later challenged by Rene Spitz (e.g., The First Year of Life, 1965), who divided the first year of life into a coenesthetic phase of the first 6 months, and then a diacritic phase for the second 6 months. Margaret Mahler (Mahler, Fine, and Bergman (1975), "The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant") and her group, first in New York, then in Philadelphia, described distinct phases and subphases of child development leading to "separation-individuation" during the first three years of life, stressing the importance of constancy of parental figures, in the face of the child's destructive aggression, to the child's internalizations, stability of affect management, and ability to develop healthy autonomy. Later developers of the theory of self and object constancy as it affects adult psychiatric problems such as psychosis and borderline states have been John Frosch, Otto Kernberg, and Salman Akhtar. Peter Blos described (1960, in a book called "On Adolescence) how similar separation-individuation struggles occur during adolescence, of course with a different outcome from the first 3 years of life: the teen usually, eventually, leaves the parents' house (this varies with the culture). During adolescence, Erik Erikson (1950, 1960s) described the "identity crisis," that involves identity-diffusion anxiety. In order for an adult to be able to experience "Warm-ETHICS" (warmth, empathy, trust, holding environment (Winnicott), identity, closeness, and stability) in relationships (see Blackman (2003), 101 Defenses: How the Mind Shields Itself), the teenager must resolve the problems with identity and redevelop self and object constancy. Structural Theory, which breaks the mind up into the id, the ego, and the superego. Actually, in German, the word for id is "es," which means "it." The word ego was coined by Freud's translators; Freud used the term, "ich" meaning "I" in English. Freud called the superego the "Über-ich." The id was designated as the repository of sexual and aggressive wishes, which Freud called "drives." The ego was composed of those forces that opposed the drives -- defensive operations. The superego was Freud's term for the conscience -- values and ideals, shame and guilt. One problem Brenner (2006) later found with this theory (see above) was that Freud also suggested that forgotten thoughts ("the repressed") were also "located" in the id. However, Freud here realized that drives could be conscious or unconscious, and that consciousness vs. unconsciousness was a quality of any mental operation or any mental conflict. Forgetting things could be done on purpose, or not. People could be aware of guilt, or not aware. Self psychology, which emphasizes the development of a stable sense of self through mutually empathic contacts with other humans, was developed originally by Heinz Kohut, and has been elucidated by the Ornsteins and Arnold Goldberg. Marian Tolpin explicated the need for "transmuting internalizations" (1971) during treatment, to correct what Kohut referred to as a disturbance in the "self-object" internalizations from parents. Lacanian psychoanalysis, which integrates psychoanalysis with semiotics and Hegelian philosophy, is popular in France. Analytical psychology, which has a more spiritual approach, founded by Carl Jung Interpersonal psychoanalysis, which accents the nuances of interpersonal interactions, was first introduced by Harry Stack Sullivan, MD, and developed further by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. It is the primary theory, still taught, at the William Alanson White Center. Relational psychoanalysis, which combines interpersonal psychoanalysis with object-relations theory as critical for mental health, was developed primarily by Stephen Mitchell. His suggestions for technique applied to patients who seemed unable to develop trusting, close relationships. Fonagy and Target, in London, have propounded their view of the necessity of helping certain detached, isolated patients, develop the capacity for "mentalization" associated with thinking about relationships and themselves. Modern psychoanalysis, a body of theoretical and clinical knowledge developed by Hyman Spotnitz and his colleagues, extended Freud's theories so as to make them applicable to the full spectrum of emotional disorders. Modern psychoanalytic interventions are primarily intended to provide an emotional-maturational communication to the patient, rather than to promote intellectual insight. Although these theoretical "schools" differ, most of them continue to stress the strong influence of unconscious elements affecting people's mental lives. There has also been considerable work done on consolidating elements of conflicting theory (cf. the work of Theodore Dorpat, B. Killingmo, and S. Akhtar). As in all fields of medicine (for example, [1]}, there are some persistent conflicts regarding specific causes of some syndromes, and disputes regarding the best treatment techniques. Today psychoanalytic ideas are embedded in the culture, especially in childcare, education, literary criticism, and in psychiatry, particularly medical and non-medical psychotherapy. Though there is a mainstream of evolved analytic ideas, there are groups who more specifically follow the precepts of one or more of the later theoreticians. It also plays a role in literary analysis. See Archetypal literary criticism. Psychopathology (mental disturbances) The various psychoses involve deficits in the autonomous ego functions (see above) of integration (organization) of thought, in abstraction ability, in relationship to reality and in reality testing. In depressions with psychotic features, the self-preservation function may also be damaged (sometimes by overwhelming depressive affect). Because of the integrative deficits (often causing what general psychiatrists call "loose associations," "blocking," "flight of ideas," "verbigeration," and "thought withdrawal"), the development of self and object representations is also impaired. Clinically, therefore, psychotic individuals manifest limitations in warmth, empathy, trust, identity, closeness and/or stability in relationships (due to problems with self-object fusion anxiety) as well. In patients whose autonomous ego functions are more intact, but who still show problems with object relations, the diagnosis often falls into the category known as "borderline." Borderline patients also show deficits, often in controlling impulses, affects, or fantasies -- but their ability to test reality remains more or less intact. Those adults who do not experience guilt and shame, and who indulge in criminal behavior, are usually diagnosed as psychopaths, or, using DSM-IV-TR, antisocial personality disorder. Panic, phobias, conversions, obsessions, compulsions and depressions (analysts call these "neurotic symptoms") are not usually caused by deficits in functions. Instead, they are caused by intrapsychic conflicts. The conflicts are generally among sexual and hostile-aggressive wishes, guilt and shame, and reality factors. The conflicts may be conscious or unconscious, but create anxiety, depressive affect, and anger. Finally, the various elements are managed by defensive operations -- essentially shut-off brain mechanisms that make people unaware of that element of conflict. "Repression" is the term given to the mechanism that shuts thoughts out of consciousness. "Isolation of affect" is the term used for the mechanism that shuts sensations out of consciousness. Neurotic symptoms may occur with or without deficits in ego functions, object relations, and ego strengths. Therefore, it is not uncommon to encounter obsessive-compulsive schizophrenics, panic patients who also suffer with borderline personality disorder, etc. Furthermore, we know that many adult problems can trace their origins to unresolved conflicts from certain phases of childhood and adolescence. Freud, based on the data gathered from his patients early in his career, suspected that neurotic disturbances occurred when children were sexually abused in childhood (the so-called seduction theory). Later, Freud came to realize that, although child abuse occurs, that not all neurotic symptoms were associated with this. He realized that neurotic people often had unconscious conflicts that involved incestuous fantasies deriving from different stages of development. He found the stage from about 3 to 6 years of age (preschool years, today called the "first genital stage") to be filled |
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