Sigmund Freud

and
Psychoanalysis
Pschoanalysis
 Theory of
personality
 • Overt behavior contains hidden meanings (Cameron &
Rychlak, 1985) implies that there is a kind of “secret
code” to overt behavior that must be deciphered if we
are to help the client modify his actions.
Hidden Meaning • Treating the overt behavior will be useless unless the
and the Concept hidden meanings are dealt with.
• In order to deal with them the client must become
of Repression aware of them, and that is the ultimate goal of Freud’s
psychoanalysis.
• Therapy must include reexperiencing the feelings and
affects that accompany the hidden meanings.
• Most of Freud’s original work was done with
patients who used to be diagnosed as suffering
from the neurotic disorder of conversion
hysteria.
• Conversion hysteria is now called conversion
disorder.
• Neurotic disorders are disorders in which
individuals have one or two symptoms that
interfere with their functioning, but otherwise
they are in touch with reality.
• In conversion disorders, clients suffer from one
or more physical symptoms that mimic physical
illnesses.
• Breuer and Freud (Freud, 1895/1937) originally
treated conversion disorders with hypnosis.
Metapsychology
• The metapsychology consists of
Freud’s belief that the personality is
fundamentally an energy system
whose business is the regulation
and discharge of both sexual and
aggressive energy and his belief
that the mind consists of three
processes or structures: the id, the
ego, and the superego.
 • The most socially adaptive way of handling
Defense repressed wishes and conflicts is
sublimation.
Mechanisms • But sometimes we are unable to sublimate.
Then we must rely on other defense
mechanisms that distort reality to some
slight degree.
➢Denial
➢Rationalization
➢projection
➢displacement
➢reaction formation
➢intellectualization
➢compensation
Psychopathology and Anxiety

• For Freud, neurotic anxiety appears when one’s defenses begin to break down.
• It is a signal that forbidden unconscious impulses are breaking into consciousness.
 Developmental
Stages and Id, Ego,
and Superego

• At birth, the person is all id. The id is the biological

storehouse of primitive impulses.
• The most crucial thing that happens at the oral stage is
the beginning of the devel- opment of the ego. The ego
develops both as a result of biological maturation and as
a result of interaction with environmental demands.
• The phallic stage is the most important one, according to
Freud. It is the stage during which the third component of
mental functioning—the superego—develops.
Psychotherapy

• The goal of psychoanalysis is to gain insight

into and conscious awareness of the hidden
meaning influencing behavior. This involves
overcoming resistance, which is the main
work of therapy.
• Before therapy, the ego is not able to control
behavior effectively because it is being
guided by forces of which the ego is
unaware. When the ego becomes aware of
these forces, they can be con- trolled
consciously and channeled into suitable
outlets. It is important to note that insight
does not eliminate the previously
unconscious primitive impulses.
 • Freud devised a technique to allow the
person to stay conscious: free
association.
• He believed that nothing psychological
Free happens by chance.
• This is called psychic determinism. Any
Association thought that appears in consciousness
is there for some reason.
• No matter how trivial or irrelevant, it is
likely to be connected to some
unconscious dynamic material.
 • Psychoanalytic interventions are largely a
matter of timing.
• Good analytic interventions first prepare a
context for insight to develop and then
facilitate the development of that insight.
• When the context is sufficiently crystallized
Therapist and developed, the analyst may broach an
interpretation.
Interventions • An interpretation is a response designed to
increase client insight. It attempts to bring
into consciousness some thematic material
that is unconscious.
• For the context to be sufficiently crystallized,
the topic under discussion must have been
explored enough for certain themes to be
nearly apparent to consciousness.
 Therapeutic Conditions of
Change

• Freud found that the knowledge that

transforms is knowledge that is emotionally
meaningful.
• Put another way, insights that are acquired
with- out an accompanying emotional
experience will not be therapeutic.
Dreams and Resistance

• For Freud, dreams were the “royal road to the

unconscious.”
• Freud believed that dreams express
unconscious wishes and conflicts in symbolic
form. Therefore, they can be used to acquire
insight.
 • The therapeutic alliance refers to
the working relationship between
therapist and client.
The Therapeutic • The analyst must be able to
establish a good working
Alliance and relationship with the healthy part
Transference of the client’s ego.
• This involves the therapist’s
demonstrating some degree of
caring and understanding towards
the client.
 • Freud himself often saw clients six days
Mechanics of a week and complained that the one-
day break would set the analysis back.
Psychoanalysis • Modern analysts usually see clients
three to five times a week.
Recent Issues in
Psychoanalysis
Historical Truth versus Narrative Truth

• Freud likened his therapy to archeology.

• Based on this archeological model, analysts have believed that the
memories clients ultimately uncover (often after years of analysis)
represent historical truth, that is, they are actual memories of what really
happened to the client or what the client really fantasized about as a child.
• Donald Spence (1982), himself a psychoanalyst, challenged this view. We
cannot reproduce all of Spence’s argument here, but basically it is that
psychoanalysis cannot be said to be uncovering historical truth. Rather, it
has to do with replacing old, dysfunctional stories about one’s past, with
new, more functional stories. This view is not only advocated by Spence, but
by many other mod- ern analysts, including Schafer (1992).
• Many of these authors draw on psychological
research that has demonstrated that
memory is reconstructive. What is
remembered in the present is influenced at
least as much by our present state of mind as
it is by what happened in the past.
Therefore, our memories of childhood are
always interpretations of what our childhood
was like rather than the literal, “historical”
truth.
• Narrative truth has to do with how well an
explanation makes an individual’s “life story”
a sensible coherent whole.
Child Abuse and the Seduction
Theory

• Early in Freud’s work, he believed

that his patients were suffering
from repressed memories of actual
traumatic events of having been
sexually abused, or “seduced,” as
children.
• He later came to believe that most
of his clients had not actually been
abused, but that what had been
repressed were infantile wishes and
desires.
Research Evaluation of Psychoanalytic
Theory and Therapy

• One of the most telling

criticisms that could be
launched against
psychoanalysis was the lack of
research done to investigate its
premises.
• This situation has changed.
 Effectiveness of Psychoanalysis
• At one point in history advocates argued that because
psychoanalysis was the lengthiest and most intensive of all
approaches to psychotherapy, it had to be the best.
• studies by Sandell et al. (2000) have found that psychoanalysis
resulted in greater symptom reduction than comparison short-
term treatments.
• Blatt and Ford (1994) have found some evidence that long-
term, intensive psychoanalysis of the object relations variety
(see chapter 7) can be effective.
• On the other hand, a study of psychoanalysis at the Menninger
Clinic (Kernberg et al., 1972) involved 42 clients over a 20-year
period. Some were seen in regular analysis (an average of 835
hours), others in a shorter ver- sion of psychoanalytic therapy
(an average 289 hours).
Psychoanalytic Personality
Theory

• Westen (1998) identifies five basic

propositions of psychoana- lytic thought.
• We shall consider three here.
• The first is that much of mental life is
unconscious.
• The second is that unconscious conflicts
can influence behavior.
• The third is that early childhood plays an
important role in shaping personality.
The Unconscious

• With regard to the first two propositions

having to do with unconscious mental
processes and conflicts, Westen (1998)
notes that there is evidence for the
existence of unconscious thought, emotion,
motivation, and defensive processes.
Measures of what are called implicit
attitudes have shown that people can
consciously espouse nonprejudicial
attitudes while holding unconscious
prejudiced attitudes (Banaji & Hardin, 1996)
Personality Development

• One of the cornerstones of

psychoanalytic theory is the idea
that children around the age of
five or six experience the Oedipal
conflict of sexually desiring their
parent of the opposite sex, while
viewing the parent of the same
sex as a rival.
Is Character Structure as Fixed as Freudian Theory
Presumes?

• There is another implication that emerges from

the view of personality as something that is
primarily fixed. Classical Freudian psychoanalytic
theory holds a largely intrapsychic view of
behavior. That is, a person’s present behavior
problems (as well as other, more normal aspects
of that person’s personality) derive primarily from
internal factors such as character traits that have
been developed and fixed in early childhood. Such
a view minimizes the impact of current situations
on a person’s behavior, implying that behavior
largely reflects a person’s internal personality
dynamics.
 • Freud has had such an enormous impact on our Western intellectual
In Conclusion tradition in general (including the fields of psychology, philosophy,
literature, and history) that it would be impossible to discuss all facets of his
influence here.