Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Theory (Part 1)

1. Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Theory (Part 1)

6. Psychoanalysis • Term has two meanings: • Theory of personality • Method of therapy • Both emphasize unconscious conflicts in mental life • Typically shaped by childhood experiences

7. Early Years • Born in 1856 in the small Austro-Hungarian town of Freiberg • Attended medical school at the University of Vienna • No real interest in the practice of medicine • Started a career in laboratory research • Left Vienna and went to study with Jean-Martin Charcot in Paris (between 1885-1886)

8. Demonstration of hysteria

9. Studies in Hysteria (1895) • Collaborated with Joseph Breuer (1842-1925) on an investigation into hypnosis and hysteria • Freud sees hysteria as unitary disease with a single cause • Searched for the “source of the Nile.” • Argued that hysterics fell ill because of repressed trauma • Experience is relived under hypnosis.

10. Seduction hypothesis • Freud claimed that childhood sexuality was at the root of neuroses • Believed that a single traumatic event was at the heart of hysteria • All were seduced during childhood • Eventually gave up the seduction theory and saw the reported events as fantasies

11. Unconscious • Freud believed that much of our mental life is beyond our reach • The Unconscious (1915) –mind is a space in which ideas move between consciousness and unconsciousness

15. Major Contributions • Unconscious • Freud gave us a much better attitude towards people who were mentally ill (bad early experiences can stick with us) • We are all in conflict – human condition