Psychoanalytic Approach
Key Terms for Review and Definition
Anal stage: The second stage of psychosexual development, when pleasure
is derived from retaining and expelling feces.
Analytical psychology: An elaborate explanation of human nature that
combines ideas from history, mythology, anthropology, and religion.
Animus (anima): The biological and psychological aspects of masculinity
and femininity, which are thought to coexist in both sexes.
Anxiety: A feeling of impending doom that results from repressed feelings,
memories, desires, and experiences emerging to the surface of awareness.
From a psychoanalytic perspective, there are three kinds of anxiety: reality,
neurotic, and moral anxiety.
Archetypes: The images of universal experiences contained in the collective
unconscious.
Blank screen: An anonymous stance assumed by classical psychoanalysts
aimed at fostering transference.
Borderline personality disorder: A disorder characterized by instability,
irritability, self-destructive acts, impulsivity, and extreme mood shifts. Such
people lack a sense of their own identity and do not have a deep
understanding of others.
Brief psychodynamic therapy (BPT): An adaptation of the principles of
psychoanalytic theory and therapy aimed at treating selective disorders
within a preestablished time limit.
Classical psychoanalysis: The traditional (Freudian) approach to
psychoanalysis based on a long-term exploration of past conflicts, many of
which are unconscious, and an extensive process of working through
early wounds.
Collective unconscious: From a Jungian perspective, the deepest level of the
psyche that contains an accumulation of inherited experiences.
Compensation: An ego-defense mechanism that consists of masking
perceived weaknesses or developing certain positive traits to make up for
limitations.
Contemporary psychoanalysis: Newer formulations of psychoanalytic
theory that share some core characteristics of classical analytic theory, but
with different applications of techniques; extensions and adaptations of
orthodox psychoanalysis.
Countertransference: The therapist’s unconscious emotional responses to a
client that are likely to interfere with objectivity; unresolved conflicts of the
therapist that are projected onto the client.
Crisis: According to Erikson, a turning point in life when we have the
potential to move forward or to regress. At these turning points, we can either
resolve our conflicts or fail to master the developmental task.
Death instincts: A Freudian concept that refers to a tendency of individuals
to harbor an unconscious wish to die or hurt themselves or others; accounts
for the aggressive drive.
Denial: An effort to suppress unpleasant reality. It consists of coping with
anxiety by “closing our eyes” to the existence of anxiety-producing reality.
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT): A blend of cognitive behavioral and
psychoanalytic techniques that generally involves a minimum of one year of
treatment.
Displacement: An ego-defense mechanism that entails redirection of some
emotion from a real source to a substitute person or object.
Dream analysis: A technique for uncovering unconscious material and
giving clients insight into some of their unresolved problems. Therapists
participate with clients in exploring dreams and in interpreting
possible meanings.
Dream work: The process by which the latent content of a dream is
transformed into the less threatening manifest content.
Ego: The part of the personality that is the mediator between external reality
and inner demands.
Ego-defense mechanisms: Intrapsychic processes that operate
unconsciously to protect the person from threatening and, therefore,
anxiety-producing thoughts, feelings, and impulses.
Ego psychology: The psychosocial approach of Erik Erikson, which
emphasizes the development of the ego or self at various stages of life.
Fixation: The condition of being arrested, or “stuck,” at one level of
psychosexual development.
Free association: A primary technique, consisting of spontaneous and
uncensored verbalization by the client, which gives clues to the nature of the
client’s unconscious conflicts.
Genital stage: The final stage of psychosexual development, usually attained
at adolescence, in which heterosexual interests and activities are generally
predominant.
Id: The part of personality, present at birth, that is blind, demanding, and
insistent. Its function is to discharge tension and return to homeostasis.
Id psychology: A theory stating that instincts and intrapsychic conflicts are
the basic factors shaping personality development (both normal and
abnormal).
Identification: As an ego defense, this may involve individuals identifying
themselves with successful causes in the hope that they will be seen as
worthwhile.
Identity crisis: A developmental challenge, occurring during adolescence,
whereby the person seeks to establish a stable view of self and to define a
place in life.
Individuation: The harmonious integration of the conscious and
unconscious aspects of personality.
Interpretation: A technique used to explore the meanings of free
association, dreams, resistances, and transference feelings.
Introjection: A process of taking in the values and standards of others.
Latency stage: A period of psychosexual development, following the phallic
stage, that is relatively calm before the storm of adolescence.
Latent content: Our hidden, symbolic, and unconscious motives, wishes,
and fears.
Libido: The instinctual drives of the id and the source of psychic energy;
Freudian notion of the life instincts.
Life instincts: Instincts oriented toward growth, development, and creativity
that serve the purpose of the survival of the individual and the human race.
Maintaining the analytic frame: Refers to a range of procedures, such as an
analyst’s anonymity, regularity, and consistency of meetings, as a structure
for therapy.
Manifest content: The dream as it appears to the dreamer.
Moral anxiety: The fear of one’s own conscience; people with a
well-developed conscience tend to feel guilty when they do something
contrary to their moral code.
Multiple transferences: A process whereby group members develop intense
feelings for certain others in a group; an individual may “see” in others some
significant figure such as a parent, life-partner, ex-lover, or boss.
Narcissism: Extreme self-love, as opposed to love of others. A narcissistic
personality is characterized by a grandiose and exaggerated sense of
self-importance and an exploitive attitude toward others, which hides a poor
self-concept.
Narcissistic personality: Characterized by a grandiose and exaggerated
sense of self-importance and an exploitive attitude toward others, which
serve the function of masking a frail self-concept.
Neurotic anxiety: The fear that the instincts will get out of hand and cause
one to do something for which one will be punished.
Object relations: Interpersonal relationships as they are represented
intrapsychically.
Object-relations theory: A newer version of psychoanalytic thinking, which
focuses on predictable developmental sequences in which early experiences
of self shift in relation to an expanding awareness of others. It holds that
individuals go through phases of autism, normal symbiosis, and separation
and individuation, culminating in a state of integration.
Oral stage: The initial phase of psychosexual development, during which the
mouth is the primary source of gratification; a time when the infant is
learning to trust or mistrust the world.
Persona: The mask we wear, or public face we present, as a way to protect
ourselves.
Phallic stage: The third phase of psychosexual development, during which
the child gains maximum gratification through direct experience with the
genitals.
Pleasure principle: The idea that the id is driven to satisfy instinctual needs
by reducing tension, avoiding pain, and gaining pleasure.
Projection: An ego-defense mechanism that involves attributing our own
unacceptable thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and motives to others.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy: Psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy Sublimation: An ego defense that involves diverting sexual or aggressive
involves a shortening and simplifying of the lengthy process of energy into other channels that are socially acceptable.
psychoanalysis. Superego: That aspect of personality that represents one’s moral training. It
Psychodynamics: The interplay of opposing forces and intrapsychic strives for perfection, not
conflicts that provide a basis for understanding human motivation. pleasure.
Psychosexual stages: The Freudian chronological phases of development, Time-limited dynamic psychotherapy (TLDP): Through this form of
beginning in infancy. Each is characterized by a primary way of gaining psychoanalytically oriented therapy, clients gain a sense of what it is like to
sensual and sexual gratification. interact more fully and flexibly within the therapy situation. They are helped
Psychosocial stages: Erikson’s turning points, from infancy through old age. to apply to the outside world what they are learning in the office.
Each presents psychological and social tasks that must be mastered if Transference: The client’s unconscious shifting to the therapist of feelings
maturation is to proceed in a healthy fashion. and fantasies, both positive and negative, that are displacements from
Rationalization: An ego-defense mechanism whereby we attempt to justify reactions to significant others from the client’s past.
our behavior by imputing logical motives to it. Transference relationship: The transfer of feelings originally experienced in
Reaction formation: A defense against a threatening impulse, involving an early relationship to other important people in a person’s present
actively expressing the opposite impulse. environment.
Reality anxiety: The fear of danger from the external world; the level of Unconscious: That aspect of psychological functioning or of personality that
such anxiety is proportionate to the degree of real threat. houses experiences, wishes, impulses, and memories in an out-of-awareness
Reality principle: The idea that the ego does realistic and logical thinking state as a protection against anxiety.
and formulates plans of action for satisfying needs. Working through: A process of resolving basic conflicts that are manifested
Regression: An ego-defense mechanism whereby an individual reverts to a in the client’s relationship with the therapist; achieved by the repetition of
less mature form of behavior as a way of coping with extreme stress. interpretations and by exploring forms of resistance.
Relational analysis: An analytic model based on the assumption that therapy
is an interactive process between client and therapist. The interpersonal
analyst assumes that countertransference is a source of information about the
client’s character and dynamics.
Relational model: A model that characterizes therapy as an interactive
process between client and therapist in which countertransference provides
an important source of information about the client’s character and dynamics.
Repression: The ego-defense mechanism whereby threatening or painful
thoughts or feelings are excluded from awareness.
Resistance: The client’s reluctance to bring to awareness threatening
unconscious material that has been repressed.
Self psychology: A theory that emphasizes how we use interpersonal
relationships (self objects) to develop our own sense of self.
Shadow: A Jungian archetype representing thoughts, feelings, and actions
that we tend to disown by projecting them outward.