Psychoanalysis

A theory of mind.

20 Dec, 20224 min read

Psychoanalysis is a set of psychological theories and therapeutic methods that seek to release repressed emotions and memories. It is also described as "depth psychology." This method of treating depression and anxiety disorders began with the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, who coined the term "psychoanalysis", and was later developed in different directions by his students, such as Carl Gustav Jung and Alfred Adler.

A key component of Freud's theory is the belief that unconscious forces influence overt behavior and personality. He believed that people's experiences in adulthood are shaped by childhood events and unconscious conflict related to sexual urges and aggression. Freud's psychoanalytic theory provided the foundation for psychoanalytic treatment, a thorough, specialized type of talk therapy. The key component of this psychoanalytic treatment is the open dialogue that tries to unearth concepts and experiences long hidden in the unconscious mind.

Freud's Model of The Human Mind:

In his first model, Freud divided the human mind into three levels:

Conscious: This level contains all of the feelings, thoughts, and memories of which we are aware at any given moment. It is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about rationally.
Preconscious or Subconscious: The preconscious mind contains all of the things that you could potentially pull into conscious awareness. The preconscious also acts as something of a guard, controlling the information that is allowed to enter into conscious awareness.
Unconscious: The deepest level of our mind and the repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression.

Later on, Freud delineated a more structured model of the mind that consists of three metaphorical parts:

Id: The id is the part of the mind that contains sexual and aggressive drives and hidden memories. According to Freud, two biological instincts make up the id:

1. Eros, or the survival instinct that motivates us to partake in life-sustaining activities.

2. Thanatos, or the death instinct that motivates disruptive, combative, and violent behavior.

Ego: The ego is the realistic part of the human mind. It is the individual's self-perception and the image they project toward others. Based on the reality principle, the ego finds realistic ways to fulfill the id's demands, often compromising or postponing satisfaction to avoid negative effects on society. The ego often considers social realities and norms, etiquette, and rules in deciding how to behave.

Superego: The superego, as described by Freud, is a person's personality in its most conservative and rational form, where only moral and societal values and principles control their actions, with complete distance from all lustful or instinctive actions. The superego is the opposite of the id and the source of values, morals, and idealism. It is the component that always searches for perfection and self-flagellation in case of error.

The psychotherapy approach is based on three things:

1. Allowing the patient to retrieve some forgotten memories that refer, directly or indirectly, to his experiences related to the symptoms of his illness.

2. Analyzing dreams by interpreting their images and symbols in light of the patient's personality and life.

3. Transference: That is the emotional relationship between the patient and the analyst, who during treatment plays the role of those who surrounded the patient in his childhood, and the transference develops in several forms, such as love, trust, and admiration (positive transfer), or hatred and aggression (the negative transfer).

How Psychoanalytic Treatment Works

In sessions, patients try to say what's on their minds, allowing thoughts, feelings, memories, and dreams to come to light. Some resort to enabling this by lying on a couch while the therapist sits behind them, while others resort to sitting face-to-face with their therapist.

In these sessions, the patient's subconscious and the inner world begin to form, and the patterns of their relationships and the things they avoid become clear to their therapist. By listening carefully to the patients and identifying the underlying problematic patterns and behaviors, the analyst can help them make significant, lasting changes and recover from past traumas.