Psychoanalytic Theory - Study Notes

Freud and the Psychoanalytic Theory — Overview

Background

• Born in 1856 in Moravia (now the Czech Republic); grew up in Vienna, Austria.

• First child to his parents, with two older half-siblings; seven more children followed in the family.

• Childhood factors: "favorite" of his mother; antisemitism limited opportunities, which influenced his education and career trajectory.

• Studied medicine (Neurology); studied under Ernst Brucke, who contrasted mechanism vs. vitalism.

• Personal distress: depression and anxiety after the loss of his father led to self-analysis; professional practice focused on somatic (bodily) disorders.

  • which could not be explained by science at the time

Freud and the Psychoanalytic Theory

• Freud was a neurologist, not a psychiatrist; early career centered in neurology and medicine, not psychiatry.

• Freud learned hypnosis from a neurologist colleague (not the first to use hypnosis with patients) and later developed free association as a core technique.

• Freud’s psychoanalytic theory initially faced resistance in Europe due to its emphasis on sexuality; it gained popularity in the United States.

• Freudian historical note: Freud had a long-standing dependence on cocaine (documented in some accounts).

• Key takeaway: Psychoanalysis links unconscious processes, defense mechanisms, and early developmental experiences to adult personality and behavior.

Therapeutic Techniques in Psychoanalysis

• Freudian theory and practice developed as a therapeutic and scientific program; psychoanalysis emerged as a therapy and a method of inquiry.

• Hypnosis

  • Used early in practice but not all patients are susceptible to hypnosis.

• Free Association

  • Thoughts without inhibition or falsification; aims to reveal hidden associations among ideas.

  • For Freud, free association served both as a therapy and as a scientific method.

• Anna O. case (as an illustration of therapeutic technique)

  • Symptoms included partial paralysis, blurred vision, persistent cough, difficulty conversing in German.

  • Relief from symptoms when she traced them to a traumatic past event; reliving the original emotional trauma led to symptom reduction or elimination.

  • Key concepts: Catharsis (release of emotions by talking about problems) and Conversion Disorder (Hysteria).

Transference in Psychoanalysis

• Transference: the development of attitudes toward an individual based on attitudes toward significant others from earlier in life.

• Patients may project feelings toward the analyst that originate in childhood experiences.

• Psychoanalysis uses transference as an agent of change: patients reenact old conflicts and project wishes/anxieties onto the analyst.

• The therapeutic relationship can provide a "corrective emotional experience" because:

  • Conflict is less intense in the therapeutic setting.

  • The analyst’s attitude differs from caregivers/parents.

  • Patients gain insight via the ego and realize they are no longer a child.

Dream Theory: Manifest vs. Latent Content

• Dreams have two levels of content:

  • Manifest content: the storyline of the dream.

  • Latent content: unconscious ideas, emotions, and drives expressed in the storyline.

• The unconscious is symbolic and often lacks logical structure in dreams; dreams may represent underlying wishes or conflicts.

• Dreams are rich in symbols (e.g., Phallic symbols, Womb, Life, Death) that convey unconscious content.

• Example components: symbols related to sex, aggression, and core drives appear throughout dream content.

Example: Manifest vs. Latent Content (illustrative narrative)

• I dreamed I took a trip to the ocean with lots of sun and blue sky; suddenly I was in a classroom alone with a message on the board in an unknown language; I shouted for translation but was alone.

  • Manifest: Ocean trip with sun and blue sky; classroom scene; unknown language message; shouting for help.

  • Latent: The dreamer’s hidden wishes/conflicts conveyed through symbolic elements; interpretation arises via free association.

Freud’s View of People and the Mind

• Not inherently "good" at birth; people are driven by instinctual drives.

  • like animals

• Driven by the pleasure principle: the mind seeks to maximize pleasure and reduce tension, while society intervenes to restrict and regulate this drive.

• Mind as an energy system: mental energy is constantly in play and seeks to reduce tension to return to a calmer state.

• Influenced by Helmholtz: energy can be transformed but not destroyed (conservation of energy).

• Central question of psychoanalytic theory: how mental energy in the mind is released and impacts a person.

Model of the Mind

• Conscious mind

• Preconscious (outside awareness but accessible)

• Unconscious mind

• The mind is organized into these three levels, with unconscious processes influencing behavior and experience.

Unconscious Motives: Psychoanalytic vs. Cognitive Perspectives

• PSYCHOANALYTIC: Emphasizes illogical, irrational unconscious processes; motives and wishes drive behavior; focus on motivation in unconscious functioning.

• COGNITIVE: Claims no fundamental difference between conscious and unconscious processes; focus on thoughts and nonmotivated aspects of unconscious functioning.

• The two perspectives offer different explanations for how unconscious content influences behavior.

Id, Ego, Superego: The Tripartite Personality

• Id (primitive, unconscious; present at birth)

  • Driven by the pleasure principle; immediate gratification; selfish; demands gratification.

  • Quotations: "I want it now".

• Ego (develops around age 2; reality principle)

  • Reduces conflict between Id and Superego by planning and delaying gratification; implements defense mechanisms.

  • Quotations: "We need to plan and wait in order to have it".

• Superego (develops around age 5; morality principle)

  • Internal morals learned from same-sex parent; punishes the ego for wrongdoing through guilt.

  • Quotations: "You can't have it, it's not right".

Life and Death Instincts

• Life Instinct (Libido): the life-maintaining energy manifested through love and sex; drives toward survival and reproduction.

• Death Instinct (Thanatos): the drive toward destruction; manifests as aggression and self-destruction.

• Interaction of life and death instincts influences the quality and satisfaction of life.

• Summarized: Life & Death Instincts compete and shape behavior and personality.

Psychosexual Development and Defense Mechanisms

Psychosexual Stages of Development

• Oral Stage: birth to 12 months; pleasure centers on the mouth.

• Anal Stage: 1 to 3 years; pleasure from bowel and bladder control; toilet training.

• Phallic Stage: 3 to 6 years; focus on genitals; Oedipus/Electra concerns; development of sexual identity and gendered behavior; penis envy in girls is discussed in some formulations.

• Latency Stage: 7 to 11 years; sexual impulses become less active; focus on social and intellectual development.

• Genital Stage: puberty onward; mature sexual relations and identification with the other sex.

Oedipal Complex (Phallic Stage)

• Named after a mythic figure who unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother.

• Repressed, unconscious sexual desire for the opposite-sex parent; rejection of the same-sex parent.

• Resolution via identification with the same-sex parent.

Fixations (Psychopathology if development is arrested or over-gratified)

• Oral fixation: traits include demanding, impatient, envious, covetous, jealous, rageful, depressed, mistrustful, pessimistic.

• Anal fixation: rigid, power/control oriented; rules-focused; issues with control and waste; anxiety over control.

• Phallic fixation: masculine traits in males (exhibitionistic, competitive, achievement-oriented); for females, naive/exhibitionistic tendencies.

Unconscious Drives and Suppression

• Freud argued civilized society increases inhibition and guilt, suppressing sexual and aggressive drives.

• Wegner (1992; 1994; 1990) found that suppressing thoughts about sex can increase emotional arousal and lead to negative states (phobias, OCD).

• Experimental contrast: allowed to think about sex vs. told not to think about sex both increased arousal; suppression may be emotionally costly.

• Conclusion: suppression may not serve us well emotionally or psychologically.

Evidence for the Unconscious (Empirical Clues)

• Subliminal perception studies: pictures shown briefly (e.g., a duck within tree branches) result in participants later drawing nature scenes that reflect unconsciously perceived content.

• Exposure therapy research and spider phobia suggest fear can be reduced by exposure even when not consciously perceived.

• Perceptual defense research shows people may unconsciously defend against anxious stimuli, leading to different physiological responses.

• Subliminal psychodynamic activation studies: eating behavior changes in response to subliminal cues related to abandonment or related themes; findings show emotional content can influence behavior without conscious awareness.

Psychoanalytic Theory and Psychopathology

• Freud posited psychopathology as a matter of degree and developmental in nature.

• Fixations reflect a child’s stage of development; the individual may seek satisfaction in the same way as in the earlier stage (e.g., oral fixation leads to oral-focused behaviors).

The Role of Defense Mechanisms (Mechanisms of the Mind)

• Repression: unconscious blocking of disturbing thoughts from conscious awareness.

• Denial: blocking external events from awareness; refusing to experience reality.

• Projection: attributing one's own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or motives to others.

• Displacement: satisfying an impulse with a substitute object; e.g., aggression redirected to a safer target.

• Regression: returning to an earlier developmental stage under stress.

• Sublimation: channeling unacceptable impulses into socially acceptable activities (e.g., sport).

• Examples from the slides illustrate how these defenses operate in everyday life and clinical contexts (e.g., Oedipal thoughts repressed, smokers denying health risks, superego guilt, taking out aggression on a pet, bedwetting during hospitalization).

Mechanisms in Action: Examples

• Oedipus complex: aggressive thoughts toward same-sex parent repressed.

• Smokers may refuse to admit smoking is bad for health (denial/discounting).

• You may hate someone but the superego dictates that such hatred is unacceptable (defense via rationalization or projection).

• Frustration at work may be displaced onto a pet or another object.

• Regression: childlike responses under stress (e.g., bedwetting during hospital stay).

• Sublimation: channeling aggression into sport or productive activity.

Projective Assessment in Psychoanalysis

• Psychological assessment: aimed to be valid, efficient; psychoanalytic practice faced challenges with methods like free association (which can take weeks to months) and with measuring largely unconscious content.

• Defense mechanisms complicate direct measurement; led to the development of projective tests.

• Projective tests are designed to reveal a person’s personality through ambiguous stimuli and the person’s interpretations.

• Core idea: personality is revealed through projection onto test items; the test purpose is not disclosed to participants to reduce defense bias.

The Two Most Common Projective Tests

• Rorschach Inkblot Test

  • Developed by Hermann Rorschach (Swiss psychiatrist); ten inkblot cards; administered to hospitalized patients initially.

  • Instructions emphasize viewing the whole image or any part; respondents explain what they see and why.

  • Scoring focuses on content (e.g., animal vs. human vs. inanimate; affiliation vs. hostility) and process (e.g., whether they ask questions or change answers).

  • The assessor analyzes both what is said and how it is said, including response patterns.

• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

  • Developed by Henry Murray and Christina Morgan.

  • A series of cards shows ambiguous scenes; respondents create stories based on the pictures.

  • Responses are scored using a scheme developed by Murray; strong in assessing achievement motives.

  • Rationale: when interpreting an ambiguous social situation, a person may reveal their personality and concerns.

Projective Tests in Context

• These tests are designed to provide a holistic view of personality rather than yes/no answers.

• The scoring is based on overall patterns of responses rather than single items.

• They aim to access unconscious content by presenting ambiguous stimuli.

Challenges and Critiques of Projective Tests

• Responses can be influenced by sociopolitical forces and context.

• Results may not generalize reliably to everyday life.

• There are multiple scoring systems; raters may show limited reliability across scorers.

• Some scholars argue projective tests should not be used in clinical settings due to reliability and validity concerns.

Visual Prompts in Practice (What Do You See? / What Is Happening?)

• Pages in the slides prompt reflection on scenes:

  • What do you see?

  • What is happening in the scene?

  • What led up to the scene?

  • What is happening at the moment?

  • What are the characters feeling and thinking?

  • What is the outcome?

• These prompts model how to elicit free association and projective interpretations in clinical or educational settings.

Connections to Foundational Principles and Real-World Relevance

• Freudian theory emphasizes the importance of early childhood experiences in shaping later personality and behavior.

• The interplay between unconscious processes and conscious awareness helps explain persistent patterns, symptoms, and defenses.

• The transference phenomenon highlights how relationships in therapy can mirror early relational patterns and serve as a vehicle for corrective emotional experiences.

• Dream interpretation, symbolism, and free association provide a framework for exploring underlying wishes, fears, and conflicts that influence behavior.

• Defense mechanisms illustrate adaptive and maladaptive ways people cope with internal conflict and external stress.

• Projective assessment, despite criticisms, reflects an enduring interest in accessing aspects of personality that may not be readily observable through conventional measures.

Summary of Key Figures and Concepts to Remember

• Sigmund Freud (1856–1939): neurology background; founder of psychoanalysis; emphasis on unconscious processes, defense mechanisms, dream interpretation, and psychosexual development.

• Main techniques: free association; interpretation; transference; dream analysis.

• Id, Ego, Superego: the three parts of personality with distinct functions and drives.

• Life vs. Death Instincts: Libido (life energy) and Thanatos (death energy) and their role in motivation and behavior.

• Psychosexual Stages: Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, Genital; the idea that fixations at stages can shape adult personality.

• Oedipal Complex: a centerpiece of phallic-stage development involving identification with the same-sex parent.

• Defense mechanisms: repression, denial, projection, displacement, regression, sublimation.

• Dream theory: manifest vs. latent content; symbolic unconscious content in dreams.

• Projective Tests: Rorschach and TAT as tools to access unconscious content, with noted limitations and reliability concerns.

Key Formulas and Notation (LaTeX)

• Conservation of mental energy (influence from Helmholtz):
  orall E_{ ext{mind}}, \Delta E = 0 \text{(Energy transformed but not destroyed)}

• Life and Death Instincts (conceptual definitions):
  ext{Life Instinct (Libido)}
  ightarrow ext{life-maintaining energy, love, sexual energy}
  ext{Death Instinct (Thanatos)}
  ightarrow ext{destruction, aggression, self-destructive impulses}

• Freudian stages (age ranges):
  ext{Oral Stage: } 0-12 ext{ months}
  ext{Anal Stage: } 1-3 ext{ years}
  ext{Phallic Stage: } 3-6 ext{ years}
  ext{Latency Stage: } 7-11 ext{ years}
  ext{Genital Stage: } ext{Puberty onward}