Psychoanalysis

Six individuals accused in the Parliament breach incident underwent psychoanalysis at a government institute to determine their motives.

What is Psychoanalysis?

• The term ‘psychoanalysis’ is commonly found in medical literature related to mental health.
• Sigmund Freud, a Viennese psychiatrist, coined the term psychoanalysis and developed it collaboratively with colleagues in the late 19th century, establishing it as the first modern Western system of psychotherapy.
• Psychoanalysis emerged as a treatment modality for individuals with symptoms resistant to conventional medical treatment, focusing on understanding unconscious wishes and defenses.
• The prominence of classical psychoanalysis has declined over time, evolving into a less authoritarian and more practical approach, influenced by advancements in neurology, psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, and natural and social sciences.
• In collaboration with Josef Breuer, Freud developed “the talking cure” in 1886, encouraging individuals to discuss buried traumatic experiences as a therapeutic method to alleviate symptoms.

Concept of the Unconscious:

• In psychoanalytic theory, the unconscious plays a crucial conceptual role.
• Sigmund Freud proposed that certain memories and their associated emotions are kept out of consciousness due to their threatening nature.
• Over time, Freud expanded this idea to include instinctual impulses and associated desires, along with traumatic memories, suggesting that cultural conditioning plays a role in keeping these aspects hidden from awareness.
• People may consider such instincts unacceptable based on societal norms and beliefs.
  • As an example, if someone is angry with their colleague, they may consciously deny or disavow these feelings, pushing them out of awareness through a process known as repression.
  • Repression is a significant concept in psychoanalysis, involving the unconscious forgetting of distressing thoughts or impulses as a way to protect the psyche.

Structural model:

• Freud expanded on this concept by introducing the id, ego, and superego.
• The id is present from birth and is instinct-driven, seeking immediate gratification without considering situational realities.
• The ego, arising from the id, serves as its more rational counterpart.
• Unlike the id, the ego weighs situations before pressing for gratification.
• It also delays gratification by channeling instinctual needs in a socially acceptable manner.
• The superego emerges by internalising social values and norms.
• This psychic agency can be overly harsh and demanding, often leading a person to adopt a punitive stance towards their own instinctual needs.

What are fantasies, defences, and resistance?

• Freud believed that fantasies play a crucial role in the psyche, serving functions like providing a sense of safety, regulating self-esteem, and overcoming trauma.
• He’d previously theorised that fantasies were linked to sexual or aggressive wishes and provided imaginary wish fulfillment.
• Since fantasies were expected to motivate a person’s behaviour, he believed exploring and interpreting them was vital for psychoanalysis.

Defense mechanism:

• A defense mechanism is an internal psychological process that helps individuals evade emotional pain by pushing thoughts, wishes, feelings, and fantasies out of conscious awareness.

Projection:

• Projection allows individuals to assign their own threatening feelings or motives to someone else, while reaction formation enables the denial of a threatening feeling by asserting the opposite.

Rationalization:

• Through rationalization, individuals can create justifications that explain away unacceptable behaviors when their self-esteem is under threat.

Splitting:

• Splitting is a cognitive pattern observed in individuals with borderline personality disorder, where they tend to think in extremes, viewing people as either perfect or deeply flawed, as exclusively nurturing or rejecting, and so on.

Displacement:

• Individuals facing serious physical illnesses may deny being informed about the illness as it threatens their reality.
• Using displacement, emotions can be shifted from one object to a less threatening one, replacing the former with the latter.
  • For example, someone who loses a child in a road accident may channel their emotions into campaigning against dangerous driving, exhibiting displacement where emotions tied to the child are replaced by those attached to the campaign’s ideals.

Identification:

• Through identification, a victim may adopt the faults of the aggressor.
• For instance, a woman experiencing domestic violence may convince herself she deserves to be mistreated, justifying her husband’s aggression.

Sublimation:

• Via sublimation, an individual can redirect unacceptable impulses toward more socially acceptable alternatives, such as channeling anger into political activism.

What are transference and countertransference?

• In Freud’s practice, clients often perceived him as tyrannical if they had experienced a tyrannical father.
• Freud saw this as a transference of past experiences into the present, where individuals apply templates from their history onto current relationships.
• He believed transference offered a chance for individuals to gain insights into how past adverse experiences influence their present behavior.
• Freud believed that maintaining therapist anonymity, achieved by withholding information about the therapist’s personal life or views, reduced the likelihood of the person developing transference towards the therapist.
• Freud also posited that therapists might have their own unresolved unconscious conflicts, potentially leading them to develop feelings towards the client.
  • Consequently, he believed therapists needed to address their own countertransference through personal supervision or self-analysis.

How does psychoanalysis help?

• Freud routinely interpreted his own and his clients’ dreams, considering them as expressions of wish fulfillment.
• He believed that interpreting dreams was a central aspect of psychoanalysis.
• However, contemporary psychiatrists may hold differing views on the significance of dream interpretation within the therapeutic process.
• Freud argued that change involves bringing unconscious desires into consciousness.
• He believed humans are driven by unconscious wishes, influencing self-defeating behaviors.
• Individuals often deceive themselves about the reasons for their behavior, limiting their choices.
• In psychoanalysis, the therapeutic relationship serves as a mechanism for change.
• The therapist, by behaving differently from the client’s parents, can offer a new relational experience that challenges the client’s maladaptive models.

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