In Psychoanalysis, We take a detailed interview and question the patient about his childhood, his schooling, his parents and siblings, his youth and adolescent years, his intimate relationships and spouse, his work environment and unearth his emotional conflicts. The patient is settled on a couch, facing away from the therapist and encouraged to talk about what feelings he has harbored and about what sentiments have accumulated as emotional baggage. Then his psycho-defences are outlined and presented to him in order for him to see his subconscious mind. Thereafter we work towards resolution by interpretations and discussions, which results in deeper resolution rather than temporary passive counselling.
Read on below articles to understand Psychoanalysis better!
Psychoanalysis was founded by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Freud believed that people could be cured by making conscious their unconscious thoughts and motivations, thus gaining insight. The aim of psychoanalysis therapy is to release repressed emotions and experiences, i.e., make the unconscious conscious
Some of the problems treated by psychoanalysis include:
- Generalized anxiety.
- Sexual problems.
- Self-destructive behavior.
- Persistent psychological problems, disorders of identity.
- Psychosomatic disorders.
- Phobias
- Obsessive compulsive disorders.
The goal of psychoanalytic therapy is to help patients better understand the unconscious forces that can play a role in current behaviors, thoughts, and emotions.
The basic method of psychoanalysis is interpretation of the patient’s unconscious conflicts that are interfering with current-day functioning – conflicts that are causing painful symptoms such as phobias, anxiety, depression, and compulsions.
When the patient reclines on a couch with the analyst out of view, the patient tends to remember more experiences, more resistance and transference, and is able to reorganize thoughts after the development of insight – through the interpretive work of the analyst. Although fantasy life can be understood through the examination of dreams, erotic fantasy etc.
Classical technique was summarized by Allan Compton, MD, as comprising
instructions (telling the patient to try to say what’s on their mind, including interferences); exploration (asking questions); and
clarification (rephrasing and summarizing what the patient has been describing).
confrontation to bringing an aspect of functioning, usually a defense, to the patient’s attention.
The analyst then uses a variety of interpretation methods, such as dynamic interpretation (explaining how being too nice guards against guilt, e.g. – defense vs. affect); genetic interpretation (explaining how a past event is influencing the present); resistance interpretation (showing the patient how they are avoiding their problems); transference interpretation (showing the patient ways old conflicts arise in current relationships, including that with the analyst); or dream interpretation (obtaining the patient’s thoughts about their dreams and connecting this with their current problems). Analysts can also use reconstruction to estimate what may have happened in the past that created some current issue.
These supportive therapy techniques include discussions of reality; encouragement to stay alive (including hospitalization); psychotropic medicines to relieve overwhelming depressive affect or overwhelming fantasies (hallucinations and delusions); and advice about the meanings of things (to counter abstraction failures).
Interpersonal–relational psychoanalysts emphasize the notion that it is impossible to be neutral. The detailed inquiry involves noting where the analysand is leaving out important elements of an account and noting when the story is obfuscated, and asking careful questions to open up the dialogue.
PRACTICE
During psychoanalytic sessions, which typically last 50 minutes and ideally take place 4–5 times a week,the patient (the “analysand”) may lie on a couch, with the analyst often sitting just behind and out of sight. The patient expresses his or her thoughts, including free associations, fantasies and dreams, from which the analyst infers the unconscious conflicts causing the patient’s symptoms and character problems. Through the analysis of these conflicts, which includes interpreting the transference and counter-transference (the analyst’s feelings for the patient), the analyst confronts the patient’s pathological defenses to help the patient gain insight.
Examples of concepts introduced include: unconscious, repression, projection, Oedipus complex, interpretation, resistance, and transference. Over 100 years since its origins, psychoanalysis continues to be a key source of insights across the humanities and social sciences.
CBT Cognitive behavioral therapy (a type) is a short-term therapy aimed at helping patients identify patterns that cause negative thinking and behaviors that lead to problems.
Four aspects jointly determine the very essence of psychoanalytic technique: interpretation, transference analysis, technical neutrality, and counter-transference analysis.
Anamnesis, of recollecting the happenings that have preceded the symptoms, is extremely important for the healing of mind disorders. Simply put, we may find the meaning of the actual symptoms as the result of a complete knowledge concerning the things happened in the past.
Free associations, replaced HYPNOSIS we have to say that this method is the golden rule of the psychoanalytic therapy. Let us see how it works.
Lying on a couch (a position imposing a certain state of relaxation), the patient speaks freely of anything that may cross his/her mind, without searching for some specific subject or topic. The flow of his/her thoughts is free, and followed with no voluntary intervention. The important thing is that the critical mind does not intervene to censor spontaneous thoughts. by temporarily give up intellectual censorship and freely speak about any thought.
What is the result of this involuntary talk? Later analysis of thoughts produced by means of the above-mentioned method reveals certain repetitive topics indicative of psychic complexes. The task of psychoanalysis is to bring such complexes to the surface of conscious mind, and integrate them into the patient’s life.
Freudian Slips and Mistakes Interpretations– This is a remarkable contribution of Freud to the exploration of the unconscious. For most of us the so-called “faulty acts” – as for instance lapses and slips of all kinds – have no contextual significance for our psychic life. Freud is the first scientist to detect the significance of slips and mistakes, starting from the premise, acknowledged in practice, of the determinism of all our psychic processes. forgetting names, projects or book titles, lecture errors such as reading instead of the word written in a newspaper another one, pronunciation errors
Analysis/Interpretation of Dreams – By far the most important psychoanalytic technique, also called the royal road to the unconscious by Freud himself, dream interpretation is considered by him an irreplaceable means to access the unconscious.
Symbols Interpretations – symbols appear especially in dreams – in nocturnal and diurnal (fantasies) as well. But they are also present in the awoken life – in the culture of people, in religious believes, in myths and folklore. Symbols are also present in neurosis – or more precisely in their thought content. These symbols that at first sight seem to be very different have a unique signification in Freud’s view: they points to the human sexual life, more precisely to sexual organs.
Transference – the patient sees in him the return, the reincarnation, of some important figure out of his childhood or past, and consequently transfers on to him feelings and reactions, it comprises positive (affectionate) as well as negative (hostile) attitudes towards the analyst, who as a rule is put in the place of one or other. The transference is made conscious to the patient by the analyst, and it is resolved by convincing him that in his transference-attitude he is re-experiencing emotional relations which had their origin in his earliest object-attachments during the repressed period of his childhood. In this way the transference is changed from the strongest weapon of the resistance into the best instrument of the analytic treatment. Nevertheless its handling remains the most difficult as well as the most important part of the technique of analysis.
Counter-transference means that not only does the analyst play a role in the patient’s script, but she plays a part in his…the result is the ‘chaotic situation’ which analysts speak of”.[10] Lacan acknowledged of the analyst’s “counter-transference…if he is re-animated the game will proceed without anyone knowing who is leading”.[11]
Resistance, in psychoanalysis, refers to oppositional behavior when an individual’s unconscious defenses of the ego are threatened by an external source.
Forms of resistance summarized below
Id resistance and Superego resistance
Repression
Repression is the form of resistance where the ego pushes offensive memories, ideas, and impulses down into the unconconcious
Transference
Typically unconscious, transference is when the patient allows past experiences to affect present relationships. In therapy, this may come about if the therapist reminds the patient, either consciously or unconsciously, of someone in their past
Ego-resistance
This form of resistance is a neurotic regression to a proposed state of childlike safety. Usually, it involves the patient’s attempts to gain attention and sympathy by emphasizing minor medical symptoms (i.e. headaches, nausea, and depression)
Working-through is seen as the process of repeating, elaborating, and amplifying interpretations. It is believed that such working through is critical towards the success of therapy.The concept was introduced by Sigmund Freud
Id resistance reflects the unconscious INSTINCTIVE desire for consistency in a manner that is based upon the pleasure principle.
Self-sabotage
Essentially, it is a manifestation of internal guilt that prompts personal punishment by the means of self-imposed impediment.
THE FREUDIAN COMPLEX –
Pudendal inferiorities governing Human Behaviour
Intro: The Freudian Complex is a psychoanalytical hypothesis put forth by Sigmund Freud, the great neuro psychiatrist of the last century who coined the theory of unconscious mind dictating behaviour. The Freudian Complex is an inferiority complex to the same sex arising in infancy in every human’s unconscious mind ,which governs almost every attitude, action and thought from birth to death. According to Freud, this is the root cause of most misery in the human mind.
A) SEEDS – The Birth of the Complex
The son develops a guilt about his carnal desires for his mother. He worries that the father might castrate him (and he may resemble his sister) as a punishment. He develops an inferiority to his father who is bigger, stronger and who has a greater influence on his mother. Since then anyone bigger, stronger, better or more successful etc is identified with the father and the inferiority carried.
Similarly, the daughter is worried that the mother has already castrated her imagined penis, as punishment for her attraction to her father. As fantasies of intimacy with the opposite gender grow, the inferiority to the parent of the same gender intensifies. At school the male child sees other boys with bigger builds, better grades and abilities, better energy at sports. He starts feeling inferior. Also, at school the word “better’’ is learnt; and a confusion between “not better” and “worse” is created.
The female child sees other girls with better physical attributes, better grades and better qualities and the inferiority grows.
B) THE STEM – Growth of the Complex
During Adolescence and teens, the development of bodies; sexual status, & personalities occur. Obviously, development of different individuals is at a different pace. This compounds the inferiority.
Why is that boy taller than me, why has he got such a handsome face, why is he better built? Why is that girl beautiful, why does she have a fuller bosom, why does she have such a good pair of legs, why is she so fair?
Why does she attract so much? Why are the boys gaga over her? WHY NOT ME? And the inferiority complex creates delusions. She is convinced that none of the boys like her since she is not “not better” but she is “worse”. Even though there may be so many boys attracted to her.
Attraction of one sex to another is genetically determined by the DNA. It is almost universal, unless previous conditioning interferes. Hence most boys are attracted to most girls and vice-versa. Of course, there will be good, better and the best choices, but certainly not bad, worse and better. The “bad” is because of previous conditionings by the parents, friends, teachers, media, religion, environment and past observations.
Also, smartness is envied. The ability of being good at elocution, games, communication, leadership and management is envied. The smart envy the beautiful, and the beautiful envy the smart. The smart girls think that the boys are perpetually attracted to the buxom beauties and the beauties think that the boys like to flirt only with the smart girls. The result, all develop massive inferiority complexes and bitterness is born.
C) THE FLOWERS – Youth and Adult Manifestations of Freudian Complex
The young man realizes that money is power, that money confers status. The ladies want status and financial stability in the man. The athletic ability at sex is no criteria for attracting the ladies, but the job status, the pocket status is more important.
The young woman realizes that elegant clothes cut well to show the good parts, revealing dressing, high heels and a sexy seductive attitude overshadows a naturally well asseted girl or good bodyline wrapped in hide all clothes.
Since money is the all-powerful omnipotent weapon, men commit their lives to it and develop an inferiority towards other richer men, and women commit their lives to finding a well settled, financially stable man and their inferiority is to women with financially well-off husbands.
The result is a highly complexed adult who is dissatisfied with himself and is bitter about his sexual status and envious of every other man with more money, status and sex appeal.
The woman also ends up discontent and frustrated and jealous of every other woman who is more beautiful, sexy or married to a man of greater status or financial standing.
Anyway, the Freudian inferiority provides drive for ambition, success &achievement.
D)THE FRUIT- Marriage-The first Psychodefence for Freudian Complex
The only goal of the DNA is to replicate and reproduce. The human being like any other animal is polygamous. The sexual desire is non-specific and universal with everybody getting attracted to almost everybody unless biased by previous conditioning by past etc.
In marriage, the spouse seeks a temporary defence against the Freudian insecurity. The man wants his wife to convince him that he is the only man she is attracted to, that he is at least her superman, that he is God’s boon, destiny’s greatest miracle for her.
The wife too wants her husband to convince her that she is the ultimate goddess and that he wants only her and that she is the centre of his existence and that no other woman is capable of attracting him.
This is the unspoken agreement, the ultimate psycho defence for the Freudian inferiority that at least my spouse does not find me inferior and that she or he finds all others in the world below average and somehow unattractive.
E) SEEDS- Kids: The Ultimate Psychodefense
Now as the marriage progresses, the husband finds out that the wife can get attracted towards other men and vice-versa. Now there is a conflict and the inferiority comes back with a bigger bang.
Now the woman wants to convince herself that though the husband is attracted physically to others, he will inseminate only her and form the fruit, the union of their two souls. The man too wants his wife to bear his seed, as this will confer on him, superiority over others. But soon after the birth of the child, the inferiority resurfaces since it had never disappeared in the first place. Now cold anger and hostility is generated in both the spouses, they may unconsciously dislike and blame each other for regeneration of their inferiorities to the same sex.
The wife desires a smaller model of her husband as her child and the husband desires a smaller model of his wife. Feud thought they may subconsciously believe that the smaller models can be made to believe that they are the ultimate and superior humans of the opposite sex. The vibrations of the mother are such that the male child gets hostile to the father and the next generation of Freudian inferiority is born. And vice-versa.
E) The Destruction of Freudian Complex:
Our society is plagued by the Freudian Complex. Firstly, we must realize that we have an inferiority complex imbibed in us, that this is making us bitter, frustrated and dissatisfied in life. We must realize that good, better and best will always exist. That sexual attraction does not confer superiority or inferiority since sexual attraction is non-specific and universal, and that this always was, is and will be as long as we are made by the genetic code the goal of which is replication.