29/01/2024

Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Psychodynamic theories of personality

• Some basic assumptions:
• The psyche is structured in such a way that many memories are repressed
and are stored in the unconscious
• The psyche is a dynamic system, which functions through affect. A
thermodynamic model/metaphor – psychic energy
• There is a competition between id – ego – superego for control of
behaviour
• Basic human drives are motivated by desires
• Past events (infancy, parenting, development, milestones, trauma) leave an imprint on the
unconscious and shape our responses to the present
• Most contemporary psychodynamic theories diverge from much of Freud’s work, but the basic
principles are preserved in some form

Psychoanalysis history and main ideas

• The notion that behaviour and mental states had unconscious origin was already in the air, in
the zeitgeist; Freud picked up on it, and reformulated it
- Repressed trauma does not disappear and needs to be expressed (through psychological
and physical symptoms).
• Repressed unconscious drives cause both psychological and physical symptoms
• “the talking cure” proposed by Freud – based on the hypothesis that becoming aware of the
source of one’s psychic problem will help eliminate physical symptoms;
- Once the source is reeled, released of energy
• Some key ideas: “the ego is not the master in his own house”; infantile sexuality; repression;
defense mechanisms
- Might not be aware of why you are making some choices
- When you face something that is not easy for the ego, mind will have specific reactions.

Charcot, hypnosis, hysteria

Charcot ; hysteria and psychoses might have psychological causes
• Freud studies with Charcot in Salpetriere
• Neuroses and hysteria treated by hypnosis
• The idea: unconscious sources of physical symptoms

Neuroses;
• Case of Anna O; beginning of Freud’s theory
• 21 year old, ill while taking care of her father
• Loss of movement in the right side, disturbed vision, hearing • Inability to drink liquids
• Cough
• Aphasia: Inability to speak her native language (German)
• Start of the free association method aimed at reducing the symptoms (conversion disorder)
with Joseph Breuer
• The main idea: thoughts, desires, psychic energy can cause physical symptoms (precursor of
psychosomatic psychology, and of the mind-body connection ideas)
• Arriving at the cause of the symptoms alleviates the symptoms via the process of catharsis.
- Catharsis; released/ relief/ free of suffering.
- Through talking, questioning, you arrived at resolution.

Freud
Context: neurology, psychology at their infancy, Vienna,
• Ambition: scientific psychology (however was not possible)
• A new science for the turn of the century Europe
• Sometimes described as one of the three big European philosophical revolutions (even by
Freud himself! See Weinert)
• Copernicus; heliocentrism
• Darwin; natural selection, challenged religious beliefs,
• Freud; ego is not the master of its own house

Psychic determinism
• Our behavior is a result of our development
• Including the development of repressed wishes and drives
• Our choices, tics, idiosyncrasies, neuroses, failures, successes etc., are not accidental – they
reflect underlying unconscious dynamics; comes from early childhood, relationship with
parents, etc

Psychoanalysis
• La Freud’s metapsychology
• 3 axes
• Psychic structure.
• Levels of consciousness – unconscious, preconscious and consciousness;
• Functional systems – Id, Ego, Superego
• Dynamic processes of tension/conflict between the structures/levels
• Economical system: energy investments in the different processes:
affects, intensity of desire/impulses, conflicts, traumas, etc.
- Influenced by the theory of thermodynamics; if you have an affective reaction, desire,
this charge needs to be expressed (even if repressed, the energy remains in the system).
- psychodynamics as a result of Freud’s psychoanalytical theory

First and second topics

First topic:
• The unconscious; inaccessible, it needs to pass by the preconscious and consciousness to be
acknowledged,
 - repressed energy might be expressed through anxiety, specific reactions.
- repression is a defense mechanism, pushed down to the unconscious.

• The preconscious; part of psyche, which is potentially accessible by consciousness;

knowledge/memory you already have in your head

• Consciousness; thoughts, how you function right now,

Second topic:

• Ego: ideal self,

- constructed through interaction with power; culture, religion, teachers

• Id

• Superego; crashes the ego

- comes from interactions with parents/family.

For Freud; The source of everything is affect. You have a drive, desire.

Unconscious-preconscious-conscious
• The unconscious (not unconsciousness)
• Stuff we are unaware of
• Repressed wishes, desires, trauma, accumulated mental energy
• The preconscious
• May or not be accessible to consciousness. Need some effort to pay attention to it
• Conscious level
• Our experience that is available to us

Eros-Thanatos and Reality – Pleasure; they both sit in the ID

Principles:
• Eros – the motivating drive, survival impulse (based on libido, sexual in its origin), activity,
orientation towards things
- Life force (affect),
• Thanatos – the “death drive”, the drive towards non-being/depression
- Disengagement, Not paying attention,
• Pleasure principle
• Motivated by ID, basic drives towards
reducing anxiety, desires • Reality principle
• Motivated by super ego/ego. Restrains the ID from acting on immediate desires/drives
• Psychic conflicts arise because of the tension between the two principles
Repression
- A psychic process in response to and defending against intolerable wishes, desires,
drives and impulses.
- One of the main consequences of civilization, we gain organized living together, but we
lose the ability to be OUR FULL SELF.
- The energy of repressed drives, however, needs to be expressed (notion of cathexis),
- Often expressed as anxiety or is transformed into other pursuits,
Worst case scenario you developed a disorder.
Attach energy to something else.

Transference; projecting feelings unto therapist.

Countertransference; therapist project unto patient

Project for the scientific psychology

- An abandoned project (before he did not get the job), recovered by Wilhelm Fliess
- « Project for the scientific psychology», 1885
- Neuronal theory (inspired by work of Golgi et Cajal); contacts (synapses)
- Energetic and thermodynamic theory of the brain
- Memory as a permanent alteratoin of connections between neurons following an event
(precursor of the theory of neuroplasticity, before Hebb)

Project for the scientific psychology

- Theory of neurons; contribution to childhood memory, brain changes based on
childhood experiences
- Direct path a for the energy discharge
- « reserved» path b, the discharge happens later (in a dream, as a neurotic or a somatic
symptom)
- Complexification of the connections as multiple alternative paths for the neuronal
energy to find a way to discharge.
- Find different ways to satisfy the same urges, when you are a child you have those urges,
but as you grow old, you find more complicated ways to satisify them.

Ways to access the unconscious

- The “archaeological work”
- The unconscious can be revealed
- through associative work
- Some processes “betray” unconscious drives/ container for our pathologies.
o Dreams
o Neuroses/psychoses
o Works of art/literature
o Religious rituals
o Slips of the tongue (Freudian slip)
Ways to access the unconscious
How can the unconscious be accessed?
- Analysis of thoughts and behaviours
- Free-association
- Automatic writing
- Dream analysis

Ego-Id-Superego
- If unconscious-preconscious-conscious are structural aspects of the psyche, ego-id-
superego are functional aspects
- They represent elements of psychological agency
- The “psychical apparatus” of personality and psyche
- Function in some degree of interaction with the levels of psychological
- Organization

ID; never accessible, start with an ID, born as an ID

- The psychological development starts with the id, “the great reservoir” of psychic energy
- The id’s goal is release of tension - cathexis
- Is instinctive, works through drives, wants pleasure and be away from pain.
- Does not need conscious awareness and operates mostly outside of conscious
awareness
- Is working through the pleasure principle – seeking tension/excitation resolution via
striving for pleasure/energy release and avoiding pain.
- Id can find satisfaction in dreams/fantasies, does not need to satisfied INSTANTLY
- Does not mature or change over time.
- Primary process = flow of psychic energy within the psychological system, needs to find
cathexis, animated by drives and operate under the pleasure principle.

Ego; knowledge about the self, ego is not the master of its own house
- Is in relationship with the external world, social qualities/abilities
- Operates under the reality principle, regulates immediate needs, figure out what is
appropriate.
- Wants to reduce tension between the demands of the external world and id’s impulses
- Develops around the ages 3-5 (according to Freud, personality is mostly stable after the
age of 5 years old), when they learn what’s right or wrong/ what’s acceptable. Important
to learn how to manage your impulses
- Works through compromises, changes and gets more sophisticated over time
- Understands the difference between reality and fantasy/dreams/art, unlike id ego can
differentiate real and unreal.

Superego; inside of all the other levels, mostly unconscious

- Is a restraining factor, functions as an internalized representation of the world’s rules,
values, morals,
 - Rewards “good” behavior with pleasurable emotions (pride, admiration, confidence) and
punishes “bad” behaviour (guilt, shame)
- Ego-ideal, thou shalt , develops first through interaction with parental figures, later takes
on sophisticated forms (religion, social values, etc.)
- Conscience – categorical imperative
- Is related to the Oedipal complex: attachment of the child to the parent of the opposite
sex
- Reaction-formation: development of a defense mechanism against previous
behaviours/desires that are now deemed inacceptable (becoming an opposite of
parents)
- You know why you don’t like stuff.

Primary and secondary processes

- Primary process = flow of psychic energy within the psychological system, needs to find
cathexis, animated by drives and operate under the pleasure principle
- Secondary process = operate under reality principle and serve to find a release of energy
generated by the id via drives, impulses, etc. and to relieve the tension between id, ego
and superego. i.e., to find an appropriate outlet for id’s energy

Superego and Oedipal Complex

- 3-5 years (when ego & superego develop
- One of the central ideas for Freud’s metapsychology
- An unconscious desire towards the parent of the opposite sex, and, as a consequence,
parricidal idation/impulse
- Inspired by Sophocle’s Oedipux Rex; about faith,
The whole family tried to avoid the prophecy, everything goes back to the faith.
Freud’ interest; to escape your faith you have to get to the bottom of things,
Oedipus complex; affective relationship with mother., which eventually turns into rivalry
with father.

Psychosexual stages of development

- According to Freud, most development of personality is completed by about 5years
of age.
- There are 5 stages of development, each characterized by a change in the way that
the body is able to experience gratification (so not just mental development, but
includes development of the body and of sexuality/erotic life)
- Each stage is characterized by different instincts one must face
- The stages are never completely “finished” or resolved. Tensions and crises
- proper to each stage may make their way into the unconscious
- The unresolved tensions of each stage manifest in many different transformed ways
during adulthood

Psychosexual stages of development Stage 1: 1 years old, oral

- Central zone: mouth. Main source of gratification for the infant
 - Bodily sources of desire
- Early stage: passive/receptive; later stage: grows teeth, can be aggressive
- Focus is typically on the mother
- If not satisfied: latent oral compulsions in passive or
- aggressive tendencies
- Adult manifestations: oral fixation, kissing, smoking, etc.

Psychosexual stages of development Stage 2: 1-3 years old, anal

- Central zone: anal. Toilet training, parents’ attention to appropriate behaviour shifts the
child’s own attention from oral to anal zone
- Drama: gets praised for going to the toilet, but then internalized feeling of shame for
being naked. Confusing tension between going to the bathroom is shame.
- Tension: pleasure for evacuation vs. need for delay (by external world)
- Fixation: “anal retentiveness” = extreme orderliness; perfection
- or “anal expulsiveness” = whimsical disorganization
- First conflict between individual and society

Psychosexual stages of development Stage 3: 4-5 years old, phallic

- Central zone: genitals
- One of the most controversial (and certainly dated) Freud’s ideas
- Development of the Oedipal complex, fixation on a parent of the opposite sex
- A more clear differentiation between sexes is experienced then
- Father: object of rivalry for mother’s attention, hostility towards the father
- Repressed hostility may result in “castration anxiety” Never entirely resolved and
manifests in dreams, neuroses, etc.
- For women? Electra complex, father as object of obsession, but identification with
mother, “penis envy”

Psychosexual stages of development Stage 4: 6-12 years old, latent

- The libido is relatively dormant (repressed or sublimated) (e.g., when children go to
school)
- Indirect modes of expression of libido and erotic impulses: growing as an individual in a
society.
- School, friendships, hobbies
- Adult manifestations: difficulty forming meaningful and healthy relationships (that have
other sources of pleasure than erotic)

Psychosexual stages of development Stage 5: 13-18 years old, genital

- The ego is fully developed, basic personality is developed by the age of 5
- Child is moving towards independence.
- First erotic experiences – if problematic, may have a lasting impact on sexual life
- Fully grown bodies, view of sexuality developed
Freud’s concept of defense mechanisms
- DMs are processes that protect the Ego from intolerable wishes, desires, impulses,
thoughts, etc. they distort unconscious thoughts and help evacuate the psychic energy.
Only way to deal with drama is to repressed.
- DMs characteristics (from Vaillant, 1992):
o They manage affect, instinct, desire, wishes and their energetic charge
o Are unconscious.
o And discrete – each DM has its own characteristic (and that what helps analysts do the
“archaeological work”
o Are dynamic and reversible.
o Not just pathological but also adaptive.

Some main defense mechanisms (from Anna Freud)

- Denial
- Distortion
- Projection
- Turning against the self
- Phantasy
- Dissociation
- Repression
- Isolation (separating troubling memory from affect/decontextualization) • Undoing
(living as if before the traumatic event)
- Displacement; feelings are put onto something else, pole of your affect are displaced
- Reaction-formation (developing an opposite desire);
- Sublimation & Ego Maturation

Carl Jung
- Freud’s student, influenced by Freud and Alfred Adler
- Directed the International Psychoanalytic society
- Originally a physician, man of science,
- Dramatic split from Freud over the concept of libido
= Analytical Psychology

Ideas:
- Libidinal energy = life energy (less emphasis on sexual origin of drives/impulses and
desires), more emphasis on life forces
- Personality development is an ongoing process, aimed at spiritual and creative
realization. (Freud thought it was set by a certain age), for jung it is never set
- Just as the body reacts with defense strategies to injuries, the consciousness reacts to
disturbances with its own compensatory mechanisms.
- Psychic system operates towards a state of balance between its parts.
- Creativity is the basic form of our striving
Collective unconscious
- ‘appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images ... In fact, the whole of
mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious.’ (Jung,
The Structure of the Psyche, 1927)
- An “impersonal” layer of the psyche
- Has an evolutionary origin, explains similarities between cultures, experiences, reactions
to the world, associations, symbols and myths
- Influential for New Age movements, explorations in altered states of consciousness etc.
- Is structed by archetypes

Archetypes

- Structural units of personality

- Common to all humans but expressed differently in each culture. Yet, potentially legible

- Often represent opposing forces (animus-anima; mother-child, etc.)

- Are related to social roles and are expressed in behaviours in different social situations

- Psychic imbalance = archetypes taking over the structure of personality

Carl Jung

 Archetypal events (birth, marriage, initiation, separation...)

 Archetypal motifs (creation, flood, apocalypse...)Mandala

 Personality development’s goal = “unity of the self”

- “Personality as a complete realization of the fullness of our being is an unattainable

ideal. But unattainability is no
counter argument against at ideal,
for ideals are only signposts, never
goals” (Jung, 1939
Jung’s personality types
An eclectic approach between Western psychology (in particular William James) and Eastern
philosophy (Vedas, ancient Indian sacred texts). Organized in tensions/dualities

- Attitude-types (attitudes toward the world)

o Introvert (withdrawing of libido from the world)
o Extravert (extending libido into the world)
- Function-types
o Thinking-feeling
o Sensing-intuitive

- Precursor of the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator

- Questionable stability/reliability/validity–but perhaps that is not a problem, since for
Jung, personality is dynamic, developing and trending towards self-fulfillment and
balance