Psychoanalysis: An Overview

Freud, Hall, Jung, Ferenczi, Jones, Brill

Where is it Now?
A Presentation by Dr Terence Nice
Visiting Lecturer Regent’s University 2016
 Charles Robert Darwin
(1809-1882)
• Studied Medicine at Edinburgh and Theology at
Cambridge wherein he met John Henslow (Botanist).
• Voyage on the Beagle to Map coast of South America
(1831).
• Theory of Evolution – if the words of genesis were true
then animals had not evolved since their creation by
God. If nothing had changed since God created the
world why had some animals survived and some had
become extinct?
• On the Galapagos islands Darwin observed two different
types of iguanas, one adapted for land one adapted for
sea – animals adapted to their environment.
 Darwin & Natural Selection

• Darwin’s precise observations led him to propose a theory of

natural selection. Natural forces weeded out the weakest and
encouraged the fittest and the strongest.

• ‘Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ is really a special case of a more

general law of ‘survival of the stable’. The universe is populated by
stable things. A stable thing is a collection of atoms that is
permanent or common enough to deserve a name. It may be a
unique collection of atoms such as the Matterhorn that lasts long
enough to be worth naming. Or a class of entities such as rain
drops’ (Dawkins, S; 1976: The Selfish Gene).
 The Unconscious
• The Unconscious or the System Unconscious is
that part of the mind in which mental processes
are dynamically unconscious in contrast to the
conscious’ (Rycroft, 1968)
• ‘Unconsciousness is a regular and inevitable
phase in the processes constituting our
psychical activity; every psychical act begins as
an unconscious one and it may either remain so
or go on developing into consciousness,
according as it meets with resistance or not’
(Freud, 1912;p.139)
 Topographical Model of the Mind

• Forces of Repression & Resistance

 Freud: The Id and the Ego

• In his later writings Freud favours an almost Cartesian notion of

mind and body, separating mental events from neurological
processes (Freud, 1949)
• ‘To the oldest of these mental provinces or agencies we give the
name Id. It contains everything that is inherited, that is present at
birth that is fixed in the constitution – above all, therefore the
instincts which originate in the somatic organization and which find
their mental expression in the id in forms unknown to us’ (Freud
1949;p. 2).
• A portion of the id undergoes a special development under the
influence of the external world and thus, ego is born. The ego is
essentially self-preservative and related to current functioning.
 Klein 1882-1960

• Klein posits a theory of anxiety – different modalities of

anxiety contingent upon P/S or Depressive position.
• Developmental theory based upon positions and not
stages (paranoid-schizoid; depressive).
• Infants are object related ‘ab initio’ from birth.
• Infants are not psychotic, but can pass through a phase
of development that appears psychotic.
• Unconscious fantasy is a driving force in development.
• Oedipal complex much earlier than Freud first thought.
• The infant’s first relationship is to the breast – so the
satiation of hunger is an important infantile need.
 Klein 1882-1960

‘The power of love - which is the manifestation of the

forces which tend to preserve life - is there in the baby
as well as the destructive impulses, and finds its first
fundamental expression in the baby’s attachment to his
mother’s breast which develops into love for her as a
person. My psycho-analytic work has convinced me that
when in the baby’s mind the conflicts between love and
hate arise, and the fears of losing the loved one become
active, a very important step is made in development’.  
 
Love,Guilt and Reparation
(1937), p.311.
 
 
•  
 Psychological Mechanisms
• Splitting: For Klein, the splitting of the object in to good and bad,
love and hate, happy and sad, the ideal and the denigrated etc. The
good is retained, the bad expelled. The splitting of an object
represents the splitting of the ego.
• Projection & Introjection: Within the baby processes of Projection
and Identification predominate, since the baby is dominated by
anxieties and aggressive impulses that lead to fears of persecuting
objects. The baby evacuates intolerable feelings (hate and
aggression) through the mechanism of projection so that they are
located outside of the baby in to another object.
• Introjection implies that the baby has the capacity to incorporate
experiences in to the self. This extends to situations whereby the
infant is able to internalize external objects and situations. For
example, this might relate to parental injunctions, relations or
statements.
Psychoanalytic Family Tree
 Psychoanalytic Family Tree
• Where is Erikson, Mahler, Stern?
• Where is Bion, Joseph?
• Where can we find the work of Andre
Green?
• Lacan and the French psychoanalytic
school?
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=l_T1WPRnJ0w
 Margaret Mahler (1897-1985)
The Masters Centre New York

• Mahler was profoundly influenced by the

theoretical and clinical work of Sigmund Freud.
• The foundations of her clinical work are built
upon clinical observation and research, as
opposed to single case studies.
• She posits a clinical model which is set against
the work of the Kleinians and conceives of the
self and object relations as ‘instinctual
vicissitudes’.
 Margaret Mahler
(1897-1985)

• Mahler brings together under one developmental

umbrella the notions of instinctual drives, object relations
and the development of the self. The over-arching
processes revolve around the pivotal concepts of fusion,
separation, individuation and autonomy.
• She argues that the infant passes through specific age
related phases to reach ‘libidinal object constancy’. The
phases are characterized by different processes such as
differentiation, practicing, rapproachment and the move
towards object constancy.
 Implicit Relational Knowing
Boston Change Process Study Group (2010)

• Something more is needed to ensure transformative

change than an orthodox classical interpretation.

• The relational domain is distinct from the symbolic.

• Implicit procedural knowing is essentially – ways of

being with others.

• Change happens in the declarative conscious domain and the

implicit relational domain.
 Implicit Relational Knowing

• Implicit relational knowing is rooted in mother-infant

experimental research.

• Two types of knowledge are indicated associated with

with different types of mental representation and memory.

• Declarative knowledge is explicitly conscious or accessible to

consciousness.

• Procedural knowledge is implicit operating outside of conscious

awareness. Procedural relational knowledge is the knowledge we
have about being with others (Stern, 1985).
 Equilibrium

• ‘State’ is a construct that captures the semi-stable of the organism as a

whole or at a given moment (Tronick, 1989).

• Dyadic state regulation is based upon the micro-exchange of

information via perception and affective display.

• Initial state regulation = hunger, sleep, activity cycling, arousal and

social contact.

• Regulation includes amplifying, down-regulating, elaborating,

repairing, scaffolding and returning to equilibrium.
 Moments of Meeting

• A moment of when mother and baby come together – the

parent is attuned to the tired infant and helps the infant’s
shift from waking to sleep.
• A bout of free play – an explosion of mutual joy
• The realization that the spoken word ‘mama’ means this
person that loves and cares for me.
• Each has captured an essential feature of the other’s
goal orientated motivational behaviour.
• ‘What is happening, now, here, between us’.
 Implicit Relational Knowing

• These inter-subjective meetings are co-constructed and have a

goal status mentally representing the aim of object relatedness.

• Tronick has described these moments of meeting as the ‘dyadic

expansion of consciousness’.

‘Once an expansion range has occurred there is the mutual recognition

that the two partners have successfully interacted together in a higher
higher obit of joy, their subsequent interactions will be conducted within this
altered inter-subjective environment’.

• In this way, we need to imagine the different systems and contexts that hold and
contain these inter-subjective moments.