Psychoanalysis is a name applied to a specific
method of investigating unconscious mental processes and to a form of
psychotherapy. The term refers, as well, to the systematic structure of
psychoanalytic theory, which is based on the relation of conscious and
unconscious psychological processes.
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THEORY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
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The technique of psychoanalysis and much of the
psychoanalytic theory based on its application were developed by Sigmund Freud.
His work concerning the structure and the functioning of the human mind had
far-reaching significance, both practically and scientifically, and it
continues to influence contemporary thought.
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The Unconscious
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The first of Freud's innovations was his
recognition of unconscious psychiatric processes that follow laws different
from those that govern conscious experience. Under the influence of the
unconscious, thoughts and feelings that belong together may be shifted or
displaced out of context; two disparate ideas or images may be condensed into
one; thoughts may be dramatized in the form of images rather than expressed as
abstract concepts; and certain objects may be represented symbolically by
images of other objects, although the resemblance between the symbol and the
original object may be vague or farfetched. The laws of logic, indispensable
for conscious thinking, do not apply to these unconscious mental productions.
Recognition of these modes of operation in
unconscious mental processes made possible the understanding of such previously
incomprehensible psychological phenomena as dreaming. Through analysis of
unconscious processes, Freud saw dreams as serving to protect sleep against
disturbing impulses arising from within and related to early life experiences.
Thus, unacceptable impulses and thoughts, called the latent dream content, are
transformed into a conscious, although no longer immediately comprehensible,
experience called the manifest dream. Knowledge of these unconscious mechanisms
permits the analyst to reverse the so-called dream work, that is, the process
by which the latent dream is transformed into the manifest dream, and through
dream interpretation, to recognize its underlying meaning.
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Instinctual Drives
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A basic assumption of Freudian theory is that the
unconscious conflicts involve instinctual impulses, or drives, that originate
in childhood. As these unconscious conflicts are recognized by the patient
through analysis, his or her adult mind can find solutions that were
unattainable to the immature mind of the child. This depiction of the role of
instinctual drives in human life is a unique feature of Freudian theory.
According to Freud's doctrine of infantile
sexuality, adult sexuality is an end product of a complex process of
development, beginning in childhood, involving a variety of body functions or
areas (oral, anal, and genital zones), and corresponding to various stages in
the relation of the child to adults, especially to parents. Of crucial
importance is the so-called Oedipal period, occurring at about four to six
years of age, because at this stage of development the child for the first time
becomes capable of an emotional attachment to the parent of the opposite sex
that is similar to the adult's relationship to a mate; the child simultaneously
reacts as a rival to the parent of the same sex. Physical immaturity dooms the
child's desires to frustration and his or her first step toward adulthood to
failure. Intellectual immaturity further complicates the situation because it
makes children afraid of their own fantasies. The extent to which the child
overcomes these emotional upheavals and to which these attachments, fears, and
fantasies continue to live on in the unconscious greatly influences later life,
especially love relationships.
The conflicts occurring in the earlier developmental
stages are no less significant as a formative influence, because these problems
represent the earliest prototypes of such basic human situations as dependency
on others and relationship to authority. Also basic in molding the personality
of the individual is the behavior of the parents toward the child during these
stages of development. The fact that the child reacts, not only to objective
reality, but also to fantasy distortions of reality, however, greatly
complicates even the best-intentioned educational efforts.
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Id, Ego, and Superego
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The effort to clarify the bewildering number of
interrelated observations uncovered by psychoanalytic exploration led to the development
of a model of the structure of the psychic system. Three functional systems are
distinguished that are conveniently designated as the id, ego, and superego.
The first system refers to the sexual and
aggressive tendencies that arise from the body, as distinguished from the mind.
Freud called these tendencies Triebe, which literally means “drives,”
but which is often inaccurately translated as “instincts” to indicate their
innate character. These inherent drives claim immediate satisfaction, which is
experienced as pleasurable; the id thus is dominated by the pleasure principle.
In his later writings, Freud tended more toward psychological rather than
biological conceptualization of the drives.
How the conditions for satisfaction are to be
brought about is the task of the second system, the ego, which is the domain of
such functions as perception, thinking, and motor control that can accurately
assess environmental conditions. In order to fulfill its function of
adaptation, or reality testing, the ego must be capable of enforcing the
postponement of satisfaction of the instinctual impulses originating in the id.
To defend itself against unacceptable impulses, the ego develops specific
psychic means, known as defense mechanisms. These include repression, the
exclusion of impulses from conscious awareness; projection, the process of
ascribing to others one's own unacknowledged desires; and reaction formation,
the establishment of a pattern of behavior directly opposed to a strong
unconscious need. Such defense mechanisms are put into operation whenever
anxiety signals a danger that the original unacceptable impulses may reemerge.
An id impulse becomes unacceptable, not only as a
result of a temporary need for postponing its satisfaction until suitable
reality conditions can be found, but more often because of a prohibition
imposed on the individual by others, originally the parents. The totality of
these demands and prohibitions constitutes the major content of the third
system, the superego, the function of which is to control the ego in accordance
with the internalized standards of parental figures. If the demands of the
superego are not fulfilled, the person may feel shame or guilt. Because the
superego, in Freudian theory, originates in the struggle to overcome the
Oedipal conflict, it has a power akin to an instinctual drive, is in part
unconscious, and can give rise to feelings of guilt not justified by any
conscious transgression. The ego, having to mediate among the demands of the
id, the superego, and the outside world, may not be strong enough to reconcile
these conflicting forces. The more the ego is impeded in its development
because of being enmeshed in its earlier conflicts, called fixations or
complexes, or the more it reverts to earlier satisfactions and archaic modes of
functioning, known as regression, the greater is the likelihood of succumbing
to these pressures. Unable to function normally, it can maintain its limited control
and integrity only at the price of symptom formation, in which the tensions are
expressed in neurotic symptoms.
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Anxiety
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A cornerstone of modern psychoanalytic theory and
practice is the concept of anxiety, which institutes appropriate mechanisms of
defense against certain danger situations. These danger situations, as
described by Freud, are the fear of abandonment by or the loss of the loved one
(the object), the risk of losing the object's love, the danger of retaliation
and punishment, and, finally, the hazard of reproach by the superego. Thus,
symptom formation, character and impulse disorders, and perversions, as well as
sublimations, represent compromise formations—different forms of an adaptive
integration that the ego tries to achieve through more or less successfully
reconciling the different conflicting forces in the mind.
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PSYCHOANALYTIC SCHOOLS
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Various psychoanalytic schools have adopted other names for
their doctrines to indicate deviations from Freudian theory.
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Carl Jung
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Carl Gustav Jung, one of the earliest pupils of
Freud, eventually created a school that he preferred to call analytical
psychology. Like Freud, Jung used the concept of the libido; however, to him it
meant not only sexual drives, but a composite of all creative instincts and
impulses and the entire motivating force of human conduct. According to his
theories, the unconscious is composed of two parts; the personal unconscious,
which contains the results of the individual's entire experience, and the
collective unconscious, the reservoir of the experience of the human race. In
the collective unconscious exist a number of primordial images, or archetypes,
common to all individuals of a given country or historical era. Archetypes take
the form of bits of intuitive knowledge or apprehension and normally exist only
in the collective unconscious of the individual. When the conscious mind
contains no images, however, as in sleep, or when the consciousness is caught
off guard, the archetypes commence to function. Archetypes are primitive modes
of thought and tend to personify natural processes in terms of such
mythological concepts as good and evil spirits, fairies, and dragons. The
mother and the father also serve as prominent archetypes.
An important concept in Jung's theory is the
existence of two basically different types of personality, mental attitude, and
function. When the libido and the individual's general interest are turned
outward toward people and objects of the external world, he or she is said to
be extroverted. When the reverse is true, and libido and interest are centered
on the individual, he or she is said to be introverted. In a completely normal
individual these two tendencies alternate, neither dominating, but usually the
libido is directed mainly in one direction or the other; as a result, two
personality types are recognizable.
Jung rejected Freud's distinction between the ego and
superego and recognized a portion of the personality, somewhat similar to the
superego, that he called the persona. The persona consists of what a person
appears to be to others, in contrast to what he or she actually is. The persona
is the role the individual chooses to play in life, the total impression he or
she wishes to make on the outside world.
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Alfred Adler
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Alfred Adler, another of Freud's pupils, differed from
both Freud and Jung in stressing that the motivating force in human life is the
sense of inferiority, which begins as soon as an infant is able to comprehend
the existence of other people who are better able to care for themselves and
cope with their environment. From the moment the feeling of inferiority is
established, the child strives to overcome it. Because inferiority is
intolerable, the compensatory mechanisms set up by the mind may get out of
hand, resulting in self-centered neurotic attitudes, overcompensations, and a
retreat from the real world and its problems.
Adler laid particular stress on inferiority feelings
arising from what he regarded as the three most important relationships: those
between the individual and work, friends, and loved ones. The avoidance of
inferiority feelings in these relationships leads the individual to adopt a
life goal that is often not realistic and frequently is expressed as an
unreasoning will to power and dominance, leading to every type of antisocial
behavior from bullying and boasting to political tyranny. Adler believed that
analysis can foster a sane and rational “community feeling” that is
constructive rather than destructive.
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Otto Rank
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Another student of Freud, Otto Rank, introduced a
new theory of neurosis, attributing all neurotic disturbances to the primary
trauma of birth. In his later writings he described individual development as a
progression from complete dependence on the mother and family, to a physical
independence coupled with intellectual dependence on society, and finally to
complete intellectual and psychological emancipation. Rank also laid great
importance on the will, defined as “a positive guiding organization and
integration of self, which utilizes creatively as well as inhibits and controls
the instinctual drives.”
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Other Psychoanalytic
Schools
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Later noteworthy modifications of psychoanalytic theory
include those of the American psychoanalysts Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and
Harry Stack Sullivan. The theories of Fromm lay particular emphasis on the
concept that society and the individual are not separate and opposing forces,
that the nature of society is determined by its historic background, and that
the needs and desires of individuals are largely formed by their society. As a
result, Fromm believed, the fundamental problem of psychoanalysis and
psychology is not to resolve conflicts between fixed and unchanging instinctive
drives in the individual and the fixed demands and laws of society, but to
bring about harmony and an understanding of the relationship between the
individual and society. Fromm also stressed the importance to the individual of
developing the ability to fully use his or her mental, emotional, and sensory
powers.
Horney worked primarily in the field of therapy and the
nature of neuroses, which she defined as of two types: situation neuroses and
character neuroses. Situation neuroses arise from the anxiety attendant on a
single conflict, such as being faced with a difficult decision. Although they
may paralyze the individual temporarily, making it impossible to think or act
efficiently, such neuroses are not deeply rooted. Character neuroses are
characterized by a basic anxiety and a basic hostility resulting from a lack of
love and affection in childhood.
Sullivan believed that all development can be described
exclusively in terms of interpersonal relations. Character types as well as
neurotic symptoms are explained as results of the struggle against anxiety
arising from the individual's relations with others and are a security system,
maintained for the purpose of allaying anxiety.
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Melanie Klein
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An important school of thought is based on the
teachings of the British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. Because most of Klein's
followers worked with her in England, this has come to be known as the English
school. Its influence, nevertheless, is very strong throughout the European
continent and in South America. Its principal theories were derived from
observations made in the psychoanalysis of children. Klein posited the
existence of complex unconscious fantasies in children under the age of six
months. The principal source of anxiety arises from the threat to existence
posed by the death instinct. Depending on how concrete representations of the
destructive forces are dealt with in the unconscious fantasy life of the child,
two basic early mental attitudes result that Klein characterized as a
“depressive position” and a “paranoid position.” In the paranoid position, the
ego's defense consists of projecting the dangerous internal object onto some external
representative, which is treated as a genuine threat emanating from the
external world. In the depressive position, the threatening object is
introjected and treated in fantasy as concretely retained within the person.
Depressive and hypochondriacal symptoms result. Although considerable doubt
exists that such complex unconscious fantasies operate in the minds of infants,
these observations have been of the utmost importance to the psychology of
unconscious fantasies, paranoid delusions, and theory concerning early object
relations.
