Sigmund Freud Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalysis: Emphasized unconscious forces, biologically based drives of sex and aggression, and unavoidable conflicts in early childhood. These were considered the rulers and shapers of our personality.

Levels of Mental Life

Unconscious

- Contains all those drives, urges, or instincts that are beyond our awareness.

- Contains the major driving power behind all behavior

- Phylogenetic Endowment – inherited unconscious images

Preconscious

- Contains all those elements that are not conscious but can become conscious either quite readily or with some difficulty

Conscious

- Mental awareness at any given point in time

Provinces of the Mind

Id

- Reservoir of instincts

- NO CONTACT with reality

- Pleasure Principle (tension reduction; increase pleasure)

- Primary Process (id satisfied the needs)

Ego

- Rational master of Personality

- Reality Principle (manipulates environment in a practical and realistic manner)

- Secondary Process (powers of perception, recognition, judgment, and memory in satisfying needs)

Superego

- “conscience”

- Moralistic and Idealistic Principle

Dynamics of Personality

Drives

- Constant motivational force

- “Trieb” or Instinct

Sex

- Life Instinct (purpose of survival)

- Libido – sex drive

- Cathexis – when libido is attached or invested in objects

- Anticathexis - the process of balancing the drives of ID and the morals of superego; the inhibition of an impulse.

- Primary Narcissism - libido is invested exclusively on one’s ego

- Secondary Narcissism - It is when the libido is back to the ego and become preoccupied by personal appearance and self-adoration

- Sadism – inflicting pain on others

- Masochism – suffering from pain

Aggression - The wish to die turned against objects other than the self

Anxiety – objectless fear; often we cannot point its source

Realistic Anxiety

- unpleasant, nonspecific feeling involving a danger

- fear of tangible dangers in the real world

Neurotic Anxiety

- unconscious fear of being punished for impulsively displaying ID-DOMINATED behavior

- ID vs EGO

Moral Anxiety

- Fear of one’s conscience

- EGO vs SUPEREGO

Defense Mechanisms

Repression: Denial of existence of something that causes anxiety

Denial: Denying the existence of an external threat or traumatic event. Inability to accept reality

Reaction Formation: Expressing an opposite of the one truly driving the person

Projection: Attributing a disturbing impulse to someone else

Regression: Retreating to an earlier, less frustrating period of life. MOST COMMON

Rationalization: Reinterpreting to make it acceptable or logical

Displacement: Shifting the impulse to an object that is available

Sublimation: Diverting into socially acceptable behaviors

Introjection: Adoption of the ideas or attitudes of others

Psychosexual Stages

Oral (Birth to 1) - Formation of ID

- E-Zone: Mouth

- Oral Incorporative – dependent

- Oral Sadistic – aggressive

- Oral behavior such as smoking and eating; passivity and gullibility (and the opposites).

Anal (1 to 3) - Formation of EGO

- E- Zone: Anus

- Early anal period, children receive satisfaction by destroying or losing objects.

- When children enter the late anal period, they sometimes take a friendly interest toward their feces, an interest that stems from the erotic pleasure of defecating.

- Anal Character – people who continue to receive erotic satisfaction by keeping and possessing objects and by arranging them in an excessively neat and orderly fashion

- Anal Triad: orderliness, stinginess, and obstinacy

Phallic (3 to 6) - Formation of SUPEREGO

- E-Zone: Genitals

- Male Oedipus complex - desires to do away with his father and possess his mother in a sexual relationship

- Castration Anxiety - fear of losing the penis

- Female Oedipus complex - desire for sexual intercourse with the father and accompanying feelings of hostility for the mother

- Penis Envy - desire to have a penis

- Phallic Personality – linked to NARCISSISM

Latency (6 to puberty) - Sex instinct is dormant

Genitals (12 onwards) - Adult Relationships

Techniques

Free Association

- Patient says whatever comes to mind

- “Daydreaming out loud”

- Catharsis – expression of emotions that is expected to lead to the reduction of disturbing symptoms

- Resistance – a blockage or refusal to disclose painful memories

Dream Analysis

- Interpretation of dreams to uncover unconscious conflicts

- Manifest Content – actual events in dreams

- Latent Content – symbolic meaning

Other Terminologies

Drive reduction: Eliminating or decreasing the discomfort and tension of a drive, which satisfies the underlying physiological need. To Freud, the major source of pleasure.

Eros: A synonym for the sexual instinct.

Overdetermination: A term referring to the numerous, complicated causes of most behavior.

Parapraxis: An apparent accident that is caused by unconscious mental processes, and therefore indicates one’s real feelings and beliefs; a “Freudian slip.”

Primal Scene: Observing one’s parents’ sexual intercourse.

Psychic determinism: The principle that nothing in the psyche happens by chance; all mental activity has a prior cause.

Wish-fulfillment: Forming a mental image of an object that will satisfy a need; a function of the id.

Condensation: The unconscious combination of various symbols or words into a single entity with several meanings.

Countertransference: An unconscious displacement of emotion or behavior, by the psychoanalyst, from some other person to the patient.

Day’s Residue: Memories of the preceding day that trigger a dream because they are related to important unconscious issues.

Dream-work The unconscious process that converts latent dream-thoughts into manifest content.

Insight: An emotional and intellectual understanding of the causes and dynamics of one’s behavior, achieved by bringing unconscious material to consciousness.

Transference: An unconscious displacement of emotion or behavior, by the patient, from some other important person (such as a parent) to the psychoanalyst. Produces the attachment that makes positive therapeutic change possible, but may defeat the therapy if it becomes overly negative.

Transference Neurosis: A major intensification of transference, wherein the relationship to the analyst becomes even more important than the problems that originally brought the patient into psychoanalytic therapy.