SIGMUND FREUD: CLASSICAL PSYCHONALYSIS

STRUCTURE

Levels of Mental Life

1. Unconscious
 Contains our urges, drives, instincts – mostly sexual and aggressive (cornerstones of Freud’s theory) that are
beyond our awareness; these motivate most of our words, feelings and actions, such as you having a weak spot and
doing favors for a person even if you're usually not inclined to do such things (sexual), or having a negative view of someone even if
he/she didn't even do anything bad to you or to others (aggressive)
 Unconscious does not mean inactive or dormant; it constantly strives to become conscious, but most of the
time only manages to become conscious in a disguised/distorted form in order to pass the primary censor
(between unconscious and preconscious), and the final censor (between preconscious and conscious) e.g.,
dreams, sarcasm, slips of the tongue (Freudian slips/parapraxes), wit/humor, neurotic symptoms; following
Freud's theory, jokes really are half-meant, teasing is disguised affection, sarcasm is disguised aggression, dreams show what you
really want, and humor is a means to talk about topics that have some sort of significance to you
 Interactions between people may involve the unconscious of one person affecting the unconscious of the other,
satisfying their hidden desires and drives, though outside the awareness of either participant; your bestfriend throws
a sarcastic remark at you, and because you’re so suave and self-confident, you receive the compliment and take the opportunity to
poke fun at yourself to make papansin to (insert name of crush here) – behind the scenes though, your friend’s unconscious drive to
destroy you (kasi inagaw mo babes niya) is satisfied, and your unconscious desire to feel pain (kasi you have a fetish for pain) is
satisfied as well
Origins:
 Repression: blocking out of anxiety-ridden experiences as defense against the pain of anxiety; the usual
pathway is: undesired behavior → punishment and suppression → feelings of anxiety → repression
 Phylogenetic endowment: inherited experiences that lie beyond one’s personal experiences; Freud only used
this as a last resort when phenomena cannot be explained by other mechanisms
2. Preconscious
 Two sources – conscious perception, and unconscious
 Not in awareness but can become conscious either easily or with difficulty; counted among these are memories
and things that shift to and from our attention (conscious perception); when you're in class, all the details of the
classroom, of your professor, of your blockmates are in the preconscious because your attention/consciousness is focused on the
lesson… or at least you want to believe that it is
3. Conscious
 Only level of mental life directly available to us; has a minor role in Freudian theory, because the focus is more
on unconscious elements and drives
Sources:
 Perceptual conscious system: medium for the perception of external stimuli, which basically means all the
info that we get through our sense organs
 Within the mental structure: well-disguised images from the unconscious, and nonthreatening ideas from the
preconscious; you might consciously think that you like someone, but the original form of it is an unconscious desire for your
hot relative which is deemed unacceptable because you’re not a Targaryen, and so to enter your consciousness it distorted itself by
redirecting the desire towards another person; most of our memories are just floating around in our preconscious and can usually be
brought to consciousness at will, unless you’re a stereotypical romcom protagonist who bumps his head and gets amnesia as a very
convenient plot device

Provinces of the Mind – the levels of mental life is a topographic model; the provinces of the mind is a structural model
1. Id
 das Es, or the “it”
 The completely unconscious, not-yet-owned core of personality
  It serves the pleasure principle, a constant and unending want for immediate satisfaction without regard for
what is logically possible or just or moral; childhood wish impulses remain unchanged in the id for decades;
although your means of getting pleasure might change from stacking lego blocks in the middle of the living room to stacking concrete
cylinders in the middle of the highway, the infantile desire is still there
 It is not immoral, but merely amoral, because it has no contact with reality therefore no values, no morals, no
ethics; thus, it is possible to entertain seemingly incompatible ideas; the id has no problems with you consciously
delivering the coup de grâce to the headmaster even though unconsciously, you have nothing but respect for the man
 Functions through the primary process because it has all the basic drives and motives; is dependent on a
secondary process, the ego, to bring it into contact with the real world and fulfill its desire to achieve pleasure;
can be likened to a president of a country – he has the power (primary process), but at the same time he relies on other people to
enforce laws and carry out his orders (secondary process)
2. Ego
 das Ich, or the “I”
 The ego is the id’s means of communication with the real world, growing out of it during infancy and
borrowing energy from it; at times the ego can dominate over the id instead of the other way around; becomes
differentiated from the id when the infant learns to separate himself from the outer world; the id remains
unchanged as the ego continues to grow and adapt to the id
 Operates on the three levels of mental life, and thus can make decisions on all three; (conscious) you like someone
because he/she’s witty, hardworking, caring, etc.; (preconscious) you like that someone because you get déjà vu when you’re with that
person, as if you’ve already spent a lot of happy moments with him/her; (unconscious) you like that someone because he/she looks
like your parent who passed away years ago, and all the affection you’ve had for that parent got displaced to this new someone; at the
same time, your unconscious is repressing and hiding this fact from your consciousness to avoid anxiety
 Governed by the reality principle; the ego tries to make compromises between the id, the superego and reality,
or at least try to satisfy each of them enough to reduce anxiety; us college students have to balance the demands of our
own desires and peer pressure (id), the nagging voice telling us to study, to do good, to clean your room (superego), and our profs
throwing projects and assignments and quizzes at us (reality)
 Constantly anxious because of the demands of the three, and so it defends itself through using defense
mechanisms; 1] Kapag nag-aral na ko, at saka ako manonood ng anime! (id); 2] Ayos lang na makalat dorm ko. Di naman
ako nagiisa e (superego); 3] Quiz? What quiz? (reality)
 Initially, pleasure and pain are ego functions because of the lack of a superego, but eventually at age 5 or 6,
pleasure and rewards result in an ego-ideal, and pain and punishments result in a conscience
3. Superego
 das Uber-Ich, or the “over-I”
 Has no energy of its own, because it borrows only from the ego
 Governed by the moralistic and idealistic principles; the superego is unrealistic in its demand for perfection
because it has no contact with reality; unconcerned with the happiness of the ego
 2 subsystem are: ego-ideal and conscience; the ego-ideal results from rewards, telling us what we should do,
while the conscience results from punishments, telling us what we should not do; if there is a lack of
satisfaction, ego ideal → inferiority, conscience → guilt; ego ideal – you must study hard, become a great student leader,
be a role model to your younger siblings; conscience – you chose to slack off, and now look at your grades. Aren't you ashamed of
yourself?
 Controls sexual and aggressive desires through ordering the ego to repress those desires

The id only operates on the unconscious, because obviously we don't have unrestrained desires of murdering your enemy or having sex with your idol
every now and then. The superego operates on the preconscious and unconscious levels. Before doing something morally questionable, you feel uneasy.
You have memories in your preconscious of being punished for similar behavior, while your unconscious is producing guilt for doing something that you
shouldn’t be doing. The ego operates on all three levels, as in one of the previous examples.
PROCESS – dynamic or motivational principle; explains the driving forces behind people’s actions; people are motivated to seek pleasure and to
reduce tension and anxiety

Dynamics of Personality
I. Drives (Trieb)
 Internal stimuli that operate as constant motivation, and thus cannot be avoided through flight
 Originate from the id, but eventually come under the control of the ego
 Four characteristics:
1. Impetus/pressure – amount of pressure the instinct exerts; the desire to remove a thumb tack stuck on your foot is
greater than the desire to rip apart that painting on the wall that you don't like
2. Source – part of the body in a state of tension; if you're angry, then your fists are probably in a state of tension unless
you like to hit people with something else
3. Aim – obtaining pleasure through reducing the tension or removing the excitation
4. Object – something that will satisfy the aim; if you have an unexplainable craving for brownies, then obviously the
object is brownies; sometimes, the object can be displaced such as in punching a wall to calm yourself down

Tension Reduction Model: complete cycle of behavior from relaxation to tension to activity and back to tension

A. Life Instinct (Sexual Instinct): Eros; Sex

 Libido is the name for the energy coming from the life instinct
 Aim: bring pleasure by removing sexual tension/excitation; cannot be changed but process of achieving aim is
varied; erotic object can easily be transformed or displaced
 All pleasure can be traced to the life drive due to its immense flexibility; the aim is static, but the means of
achieving it can be varied, can be active or passive, and can temporarily or permanently inhibited; pleasure is
not limited to just genital pleasure
Erogenous Zones
 Capable of producing sexual pleasure – the genitals, the mouth and the anus
Forms of Life Instinct
a. Narcissism
 Excessive love of oneself
a.1. Primary Narcissism (Self-love)
- natural self-centeredness of infants, due to them not recognizing any person other than themselves;
eventually, infants become interested in other people, turning this narcissistic libido into object libido
a.2. Secondary Narcissism
- moderate degree of self-love in adolescents and even adults, shown in care given towards personal
appearance, public image, etc.
b. Love
 Investment of libido on an external person or object; basically, narcissism is towards oneself, and love is towards
anything other than oneself, and since everything can be distorted, it can take any form from
blatant, sexual desire towards an acquaintance to an obsession with video games or a book
series
 Reciprocal state of attraction; not always though :(
 Overt sexual love for one's parents and siblings is ordinarily repressed
because you know, incest is not cool; because the original aim of sexual love
has been repressed, it is now different from the usual love, and is then called
aim-inhibited love Clearly, he is an exception.
* Love and narcissism are related; narcissism is love of self, while love cannot avoid having some trace of
narcissism in it; I love you because you make me feel like I mean something, like I have some sort of worth in this world (still
narcissism)
 c. Sadism
 Pleasure is obtained by inflicting pain/humiliation on others; it is a common need, but becomes a
perversion when the sexual aim is secondary to the destructive aim; why is it common? very few of us are
understanding saints who get absolutely no pleasure from watching your sworn enemy trip and fall on his face; becomes a
perversion when you start considering killing that person, dumping the body in a river and throwing in a piece of cardboard
as well for good measure
 Combination of life and death instinct
d. Masochism
 Pleasure is obtained from pain/humiliation inflicted by themselves or others; same properties as sadism,
but does not rely on having another person to inflict pain or humiliation on
 Combination of life and death instinct
Sexual Perversion: sadism and masochism taken to the extreme

B. Death Instinct (Destructive Instinct): Thanatos; Aggression and Distraction

 Death drive (Freud did not give the energy from this drive a name); Mortido by Federn, Destrudo by Weiss
 Aims to bring organism into a state of calm or non-existence, and since the ultimate form is death, then the
final aim is self-destruction; ranges from gossip and teasing to full out wars, discrimination and murder

II. Anxiety
 The two instincts are overshadowed by reality, which imposes laws and morals, thus stopping the person,
usually, from always fulfilling the desires of these drives, resulting in anxiety, and eventually repression; if it
weren't for the Ten Commandments and other religious laws, the judicial system, and basic human ethics, people would've been
killing each other long ago! Oh wait…
 A felt, affective, unpleasant state accompanied by physical sensation that warns the person of danger, allowing
it to be alert for signs of stress; an ego-preserving mechanism, because it makes us vigilant and wary
 Produced only by the ego, but can take different forms depending on what the ego is depending on; self-
regulating because it causes repression, which in turn reduces the pain of anxiety
Birth Trauma: most extreme form of anxiety we feel when separated from our mothers at birth. This is the change
from an environment of complete security and satisfaction to one in which the satisfaction of needs is less
predictable

Kinds of Anxiety
1. Neurotic Anxiety (a.k.a. nervous anxiety)
 Apprehension about an unknown danger existing within the ego but originating from the id; therefore, it is
unconscious; you don't know why you always feel nervous around that girl that you like. Is it because she looks like your ex?
Yes! You dumped aforementioned ex out of anger at her, but promptly got your ass whooped because her father’s part of the
mafia. Your desire to do a Hannibal Lecter on her then became accompanied by a fear of ass whooping, and that fear
generalized into anxiety around everyone who looks like her, even though those lookalikes probably don’t have mafia dads.
Probably.
2. Moral Anxiety
 Conflict between realistic needs of ego and dictates of superego;
Ego: “Can I eat this slice of pizza please.”
Superego: “No; you get fat.”
“But I haven’t eaten for three days–”
“If you eat pizza, great dishonor! Dishonor on you, dishonor on your cow–”
3. Realistic Anxiety
 An unpleasant, nonspecific feeling involving a possible danger; closely related to fear, but lacks the presence
of a specific object or source of negative feeling;
 Produced by ego
  Additionally, the three kinds of anxiety sometimes occur in combination, or
are hard to distinguish from one another; for example, you’re in a pasture (which
was said to be) full of cows. You’re afraid one of them might run into you and kill you
because you watched a Youtube video of cows trampling a man to death (realistic). You
think that way – even though in reality they don’t give a shit about you – because you have
a phobia of them (neurotic). You want to hit them and make them go away, but you're
Hindu so you can't (moral). So instead, you just start eating grass and pretend you’re one of
them.
CSSC’s secret weapon during fun runs.
Defense Mechanisms
 Operates purely at the unconscious level; universal, used by everyone to varying degrees; irrational when carried to
extremes, leading to compulsive, repetitive and neurotic behavior
 Blocking of unpleasant impulses by distorting them to acceptable ones; you have a desire to kill everyone around you because
you're crazy. You can't do that, so you make paintings about killing people instead.
 Protects ego from anxiety
 Beneficial to individual and mostly harmless to society
Kinds of Defense Mechanism
1. Repression
 Primary defense mechanism, due to society punishing instances of uninhibited expression of sexual and
aggressive desires, resulting in anxiety, and ultimately resulting in repression
 Represses threatening feelings and forcing it into the unconscious; a ‘motivated forgetting’; repressed feelings
remain in the unconscious, unchanged
 Finds expression in a displaced/disguised form, such as in dreams, slips of the tongue, or through other defense
mechanisms
2. Denial
 Blocking of external wants from awareness; when events are too much to handle, the person refuses to see it;
this is a regular trope or element in media – people refusing to accept past events such as the death of a loved one, the loss of
something significant, etc.
 Denial in Fantasy: imagination transforms an event/person/object into a less threatening form; more common
in children; representation of actual people like bullies, mean teachers, oppressive siblings as “monsters” in their drawings, or being
fixated on the partner that you want (fantasy), instead of focusing on the partner that you have (reality)
3. Undoing
 Getting rid of unpleasant experience by compulsive ceremonial behavior; a neurotic fear of getting disease – Ebola,
Spanish flu, Black Death, whatever – can manifest itself through compulsive hand washing and a constant need to be “clean”
 May turn into OCD
4. Reaction Formation
 Repressed impulses comes into unconscious through adapting a disguised form that is the opposite of original
form; excessive, exaggerated, and can be easily seen as “fake” if observed carefully; being excessively aggressive
towards a person, slapping them on the back, always pushing them, always teasing them, because deep down inside you like
him/her, lol
 Believing the opposite
5. Fixation
 Refusal to move to the next stage of development; related to denial, because when you refuse to accept that things have
changed, then you will be stuck in that same place and same mindset; a rich person who lost all his money due to gambling doesn't
adapt – he still keeps buying expensive things, and pretending as if nothing changed because accepting that will be too stressful for
him
 More or less permanent expenditure of psychic energy
 Common in a lot of people; oral fixation – smoking, eating excessively, talking too much, etc.
 6. Regression
 going back to a previous, more comfortable stage
 Temporary expenditure of psychic energy; there will always be days where you just feel like lying in bed all afternoon, but
the feeling will eventually come to pass, and you will then find in yourself the motivation to face the day and be awesome
7. Introjection
 taking the positive traits of someone else and incorporating them into yourself; 'identification'; everyone has idols
in life who they try to emulate, and this identification inflates their sense of self-worth because they’re sort of “sharing” in that idol’s
fame and glory
 Identification with Aggressor (Negative Introjection): adaptation of negative or feared traits; Stockholm syndrome;
a person becomes a robber's hostage, and to counter the anxiety of the situation, his ego starts to relate the robber and him,
thinking 'Siguro may dahilan siya.', 'Tao din siya, may pangarap, may motibo.', thus reducing the perceived threat of the robber
8. Projection
 Attribution of unwanted impulses to an external object/person
 Seeing in others unacceptable feelings or tendencies that are present in one’s unconscious; your hand and your
seatmate's brush one another for a moment, 'Uy, keep distance please. No homo bro. Siguro may gusto ka sakin no. Lul bading
ka eh.', when in reality, you're the one who's actually attracted to the same sex
 Paranoia: powerful delusion of jealousy and persecution; characterized by repressed homosexual feelings
towards the prosecutor; does not result from projection, but is rather a severe variant of projection
9. Displacement
 Redirecting impulse towards another target; you got rejected by your crush, so you direct all your love towards food, because
food will never let you down (unless you have no money)
 Turning Against Self (Self-Harm); you're angry towards someone so you punch the wall; you think you're becoming more
relieved because you've vented out, but what actually happened is you got relief from feeling pain; masochists bewaaaaare
10. Sublimation
 Only truly successful defense mechanism because it's actually beneficial to the person and to society
 Transforms unacceptable impulse into socially acceptable and productive forms, substituting them with
cultural or social aims; your parents got shot by some mugger, and you become filled with rage and anger, but instead of
choosing to beat up random innocents, you decide to beat up… criminals! And you do it with a mask so you’re kool and skeri
11. Intellectualization
 Removing emotional content from the thought before allowing in into awareness; 'Did you know that a heart
attack is also called a myocardial infarction?', 'Didn't your uncle die of a heart attack recently?', 'As I was saying, a myocardial
infarction is caused by…'
12. Rationalization
 Cognitive distortion of the ‘facts’ to make an event or impulse less threatening, or to reconcile two
contradictory beliefs of thoughts
 Gives explanation which is logically consistent or ethically acceptable
 Sour-grape (bitter); sweet-lemon (content, finds silver lining); You spent three weeks preparing for your report, but still,
you fail miserably and get a low grade. “’Takte naman kasi eh, kung ‘di lang tanong nang tanong si ma’am, ‘di ko
makakalimutan yung minemorize ko.” (sour-grape); “Hay. Oh well, at least tapos na ko. Pwede na ‘ko mag-LoL hanggang
3am.” (sweet-lemon)

GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

Psychosexual Stages of Development

I. Infantile Period
 Sexual life goes through pregenital sexual development during first 4 – 5 years after birth.
 Exclusively autoerotic, i.e. pleasure is centered on oneself, and incapable of reproduction
 Mouth and anus, aside from the genitals, are particularly sensitive to erogenous stimulation
 Before the genital phase, there is no distinction between male and female psychosexual growth, and children of
either gender can develop an active (masculine traits: dominance, sadism) or passive (feminine traits:
voyeurism, masochism) orientation
 There is overlap between the three stages, and each continues after the onset of later stages
 3 Phases:
A. Oral Phase
 Infants obtain nourishment through the oral cavity but also gain pleasure through the art of sucking
 Birth to 18 months
 Centered in the mouth
 2 Subdivisions:
1. Oral Receptive: during early oral activity, infants feel no ambivalence toward the pleasurable object
and their needs are usually satisfied with a minimum of frustration and anxiety; eventually,
ambivalence is felt because of reduced durations of feeding and weaning; ego also starts to develop
defenses against anxiety
2. Oral Sadistic: infants respond to others through biting, cooing, closing their mouth, smiling and
crying. Their first autoerotic experience is thumb sucking, a defense against anxiety that satisfies
their sexual but not their neurotic needs
B. Anal Phase (or sadistic-anal phase)
 Anus is the erogenous zone
 From 2-4 years old
 Satisfaction is gained through aggressive behavior and through the excretory function
 Anal character: keeping and possessing objects, orderly (may develop into OCD); originated from
being resistant to toilet training, and holding back their feces
 Anal triad: orderliness, stinginess, obstinacy
 Anal expulsive: disorderly
 If the behavior of presenting feces “as a gift” is accepted by their parents, the children are likely to
grow into generous and magnanimous adults. However if their “gift” is rejected in a punitive fashion,
children may adopt another method of obtaining anal pleasure – withholding the feces until the
pressure becomes both painful and erotically stimulating.
 2 subdivisions:
1. Early Anal: receive satisfaction by destroying and losing things
2. Late Anal: children sometimes take a friendly interest in their feces that stems from the erotic
pleasure of defecating.
C. Phallic Phase
 From 4-6 years old
 First stage of sexual life
 Genital area is the erogenous zone
 Masturbation is nearly universal, but because parents generally suppress these activities, children usually
repress their conscious desire to masturbate by the time their phallic period comes to an end
 Positive achievement form gratification that includes sex-relevant role modeling, initiative, purpose and
ethical sense
 Negative achievement form guilt, sentimentality and superficiality
 Oedipus complex: loving and hostile wishes that children experience towards their parents at the height
of the phallic phase
o Male Oedipus complex:
o Infant boys form an identification with their father; they want to be them. Later develop
a sexual desire for their mother; they want to have their mother. These two wishes do not
 appear mutually contradictory to the underdeveloped ego, so they are able to exist side by
side for a time.
o Eventually a boy will realize that these two desires are contradictory, resulting in hatred
for the father and incestuous feeling for the mother. These two feelings make up the
simple Oedipus complex.
o Due to the bisexual nature of children, male children will also have feminine dispositions,
e.g. lust for the father and hatred for the mother. This combines with the simple Oedipus
complex (masculine disposition), resulting in ambivalent feelings for both parents, which
can coexist if one or both feelings are unconscious, e.g. love for the father may be
conscious, and hatred, unconscious. This state of ambivalence is the complete Oedipus
complex.

o Female Oedipus Complex: (castration complex first before Oedipus complex)

o Initially there is a desire for the mother similar to what boys feel, but with the formation
of penis envy, the girl blames her mother for her lack of a penis.
o Libido is then redirected towards the father; hatred for the mother and incestuous feeling
for the father make up the simple female Oedipus complex

 Castration complex:
o In boys:
o The complex first starts with the great emotional shock and realization that girls do not
have a penis, eventually leading to a conclusion that girls have had their penis cut off.
o Castration anxiety results from the boy fearing that he might have his penis cut off as
well, leading to a repression of sexual activity.

o In girls:
o Girls initially assume that everyone has genitals similar to their own, but soon they realize
that boys have more than they do, resulting in penis envy.
o Penis envy may last for years in one form or another, becoming a powerful factor in the
formation of the girl’s personality; expressed as a wish to be a man, or to have a man
o May be resolved through one of three ways: 1) abandoning both masculine and feminine
dispositions, developing an intense hostility for the mother; 2) clinging to the masculine
disposition; 3) normal Oedipus complex route

 Dissolution of Oedipus Complex

o In boys:
o Incestuous desires are surrendered, changing into feelings of tender love; also leads to
development of a primitive superego.
o Boy may start identifying either with father or mother, depending on feminine disposition
o Identification is no longer wanting to become that parent; instead, that parent is used a
model for determining what is right, what is wrong, what values to hold, etc.
o Superego (built from the remnants of the Oedipus complex) is stronger because the
castration complex completely shatters the Oedipus complex

o In girls:
o Incestuous desires are surrendered, identification with mother returns
o The Oedipus complex is broken up more slowly and less completely
o Superego is weaker due to gradual breakup of Oedipus complex, and lack of traumatic
show similar to castration anxiety
 Male Phallic Stage
Oedipus Complex → Castration Complex → Identification with father → Strong superego
Female Phallic Stage
Castration Complex → Oedipus Complex → Identification with mother→ Weak superego

II. Latency Period

 From 4-5 years old until puberty
 Period of dormant psychosexual development
 Brought about partly by parents’ attempts to punish or discourage sexual activity
 Superego starts to evolve
 Sexual drive still exist but its aim has been inhibited and children form groups or cliques, an impossibility
during the infantile period when the sexual drive was completely autoerotic
III. Genital Period
 Second phase of sexual life: period of sexual awakening
1. Adolescents give up autoeroticism and direct Eros to another person
2. Reproduction is now possible
3. Penis envy may continue to linger. The vagina finally obtains the same status for girls as the penis had.
Boys see the female organ as a sought-after object rather than a source of trauma
4. Entire sexual drive takes on a more complete organization and the component drives that had operated
somewhat independently during the early infantile period gain a kind of synthesis during adolescence.
 Mouth, anus and other pleasurable become secondary to genital area
IV. Maturity Period
 A stage attained after a person has passed through the earlier developmental periods in an ideal manner.
 Psychological maturity seldom happens, because people have too many opportunities to develop pathological
disorders or neurotic predispositions.
 Consciousness would play a more important role in behavior as mature individuals have minimal need to
repress sexual and aggressive urges
 Mature people would come through the experiences of childhood and adolescence in control of their psychic
energy and with their ego functioning in the center of an ever expanding world of consciousness.
 There is balance among id, ego and superego. The ego controls id and superego but also has reasonable desires

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

 Results from unresolved issues

 Most people have inadequate amounts of psychic energy, leaving less energy for adulthood, thus leading to fixation
 Cathexis: investment of psychic energy in an object, idea, or person (obsession)
 Anti-cathexis: inhibition of an impulse by either the ego or superego

CHANGE

I. FREUD’S THERAPEUTIC TECHNIQUE

Early Approach
 Seduction theory; highly suggestive procedure that implanted the idea that the patient must have had some early
experience of being seduced by an adult

Later Therapeutic Technique

 Extracts repressed childhood memories through:
a. Free Association: verbalizing every thought
 b. Catharsis: express feelings and emotions (venting)
 Transference: the strong sexual or aggressive feelings, positive or negative, that patients develop toward their
analyst during the course of treatment. Transference feelings are unearned by the therapist and are merely
transferred to her or him from patients’ earlier experiences, usually with their parents.
o Positive Transference: permits patients to more or less relive childhood experiences with the non-
threatening climate of analytical treatment
o Negative Transference: a form of hostility that must be recognized by the therapist and explained to the
patients that they can overcome resistance to treatment

 Resistance: the variety of response used by the patients to block their own progress. Can be positive sign
because it indicates that therapy has advanced beyond superficial material but prolonged resistance is negative.
*Limitations:
1. Not effective with psychoses
2. Not all memories can be recalled
3. May develop other neuroses

II. DREAM ANALYSIS

 Manifest content: the surface meaning or the conscious description of the dream given by the dreamer; you saw
your own back in your dream
 Latent content: unconscious description of the dream; dream analysis would say that your back “represents your
attitudes, strengths burdens and stance in the world. It may also relate to stress and pressure that someone is putting on you.” All
that, just from your back. San ka pa?
 Dreams are wish-fulfillments except to those suffering from a traumatic experience (these dreams follow the
repetition compulsion) and are the “royal roads to knowledge of the unconscious”. They are expressed in the
latent content and only dream interpretation can uncover that wish. They are formed in the unconscious but
work their way to the conscious.
 Condensation: refers to the fact that the manifest dream content is not as extensive as the latent level,
indicating that the unconscious material has been abbreviated or condensed before appearing on the manifest
level.
 Displacement: means that the dream image is replaced by some other idea only remotely related to it

III. FREUDIAN SLIPS/PARAPRAXES

 everyday slips of the tongue, misreading, incorrect hearing, misplacing objects, temporarily forgetting names
are not chance accidents but reveal a person’s unconscious intentions.