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Vienna Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Psychoanalysis: a new model of the human mind Wo Es war, soll Ich werden Where Id was, there shall Ego be. Maria Grazia Tundo, 2006. Dynamic psychology.
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ViennaSigmund Freud(1856-1939) Psychoanalysis: a new model of the human mind Wo Es war, soll Ich werdenWhere Id was, there shall Ego be Maria Grazia Tundo, 2006
Dynamic psychology • Working with Breuer, a Viennese colleague and friend, he developed the idea that many NEUROSES had their origin in unresolved conflicts, in deeply TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCES, now FORGOTTEN and HIDDEN from consciousness. • Childhood sexual experiences are crucial. • Treatment: to enable patients to recall the experience to consciousness, to confront it in a deep way, thus discharging it.
Human personality • Psychic energy= human personality is an ENERGY SYSTEM. • Principle of the conservation of energy by Helmholz= the total amount of energy in any given physical system is always constant; when energy is moved from one part of the system it must reappear in another part.
The theory of the unconscious • We are governed by hidden mental processes of which we are unaware and over which we have no control. • Whenever a psychic urge or drive is repressed, suppressed or driven out of consciousness it appears elsewhere. • The ID, the EGO, the SUPEREGO interact dynamically (a topographical tripartite model of the mind). • Wit, dreams, so-called Freudian slips and free associations are analytic tools. • Aim: to permit freedom through knowledge, even if Freud revealed how limited knowledge is.
Theory of the drives • Libido = sexual energy. • Sexuality = any form of pleasure derived from the body. • Eros (the life instinct)= all self-preserving and erotic instincts. • Thanatos (the death instinct) = all instincts towards aggression, self-destruction, and cruelty - (annihilation of the self).
A topographical model of the mind • The ID is that part of the mind in which there are the instinctual sexual drives which require satisfaction. • The SUPER-EGO is that part which contains socially-acquired control mechanisms which have been internalised. • The EGO is the conscious self created by the dynamic tensions and interactions between the id and the super-ego. • The task of the EGO is to reconcile the conflicting demands of the id and the super-ego with the requirements of external reality. • Psychological well-being: a harmonious relationship between the three elements
Stages of development • ORAL STAGE (infants derive pleasure through the act of sucking). • ANAL STAGE (the locus of pleasure or energy release is the anus, particularly in the act of defecation) • PHALLIC STAGE (the young child develops an interest in its sexual organs as a site of pleasure and develops a deep sexual attraction for the parent of the opposite sex, and a hatred of the parent of the same sex (the 'Oedipus complex'). This, however, gives rise to (socially derived) feelings of guilt in the child and to “castration anxiety”. • LATENCY PERIOD (at five, the child usually resolves the conflict of the Oedipus complex by coming to identify with the parent of the same sex).
Defence mechanisms • They attempt to prevent conflicts from becoming too acute. • REPRESSION (pushing conflicts back into the unconscious) • SUBLIMATION (channelling the sexual drives into the achievement of socially acceptable goals) • FIXATION (the failure to progress beyond one of the developmental stages) • REGRESSION(a return to the behaviour characteristic of one of the stages)
Psychoanalysis as Therapy • The talking cure. • Patients had to relax (use of the couch; analyst out of sight). • Method of free-association (to disarm the super-ego). • Analysis of dreams (manifest and latent content). • Help the patient to overcome resistances and hostility towards the analyst. • Aim: the patient must become conscious of unresolved conflicts buried in the unconscious mind. • A form of self-understanding. It is up to the patient to decide how to handle this newly-acquired understanding of the unconscious forces motivating him.
Transference • Transference is a phenomenon characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings for one person to another. • One definition of transference is "the inappropriate repetition in the present of a relationship that was important in a person's childhood • Transference occurs when a client projects feelings toward the therapist that more legitimately belong with certain important others. • Freud felt that transference was necessary in therapy in order to bring the repressed emotions that have been plaguing the client for so long, to the surface.
Freudianism and literature • Freud’s theories provide various means of investigating human culture and its artefacts, including literature.[...] • Freud's work on the language and structure of dreams, which emphasizes that all human thought and discourse is fundamentally symbolic, has produced fruitful comparisons between dreams and poetic language. • Both rely upon metaphor, simile, and synecdoche to say one thing in terms of another.