Psychoanalytic Theory

Prepared by:
Jomar V. Sayaman, RPm
 Biography

March 6 or May 6, 1856

Freiberg, Moravia (Czech Republic)

1939
London
 • Sigmund Freud was the firstborn child of Jacob
and Amalie Nathanson, although, his father had
two grown sons.

• When Freud was about a year and a half old, his

mother gave birth to a second son, Julius, an
event that was to have a significant impact on
Freud’s psychic development

• When Sigmund was three, the two Freud families

left Frieberg.

• Spent most of his life (80 years) in Vienna,

Austria
 • Freud was drawn into medicine because of his
intense curiosity about human nature

2 factors that hindered his work in teaching and

research:
1. Opportunities for academic advancement would
be limited
2. His father became less able to provide monetary
aid

• Reluctantly turned from laboratory to the

practice of medicine
• He worked for 3 years in the General Hospital of
Vienna
• In 1885, he received a traveling grant from the
University of Vienna and decided to study in Paris
 Studied with Charcot (hysteria)
Through hypnosis, Freud became convinced of a
psychogenic and sexual origin of hysterical symptoms.
Jean-Martin Charcot
• Freud developed a close professional association
and a personal friendship with Josef Breuer

• While using catharsis, Freud gradually and

laboriously discovered the free association
technique

• From as early as adolescence, Freud literally

dreamed of making a monumental discovery and
achieving fame
• Two opportunities to gain recognition

1. Experiments with cocaine

& Breuer (catharsis)

• Breuer taught
Freud about
catharsis
• While using
catharsis, Freud
gradually and
laboriously
discovered the
free association
technique
 • From as early as adolescence, Freud literally
dreamed of making a monumental discovery and
achieving fame

• Two opportunities to gain recognition

1. Experiments with cocaine

2. When he had presented his discovery about

male hysteria

• Freud told a very different story, claiming that his

lecture was not well received because members
of the learned society could not fathom the
concept of male hysteria.
 • Freud felt the need to join with a more
respected colleague after being disappointed in
his attempts to gain fame

• Breuer had discussed in detail with Freud the case

of Anna O. (Bertha Pappenheim)

• Freud urged Breuer to collaborate with him in

publishing an account of Anna O. and several
other cases of hysteria.

• With some reluctance, Breuer agreed to publish

with Freud “Studies on Hysteria (1895)”
 • Freud turned to his friend Wilhelm Fliess who
served as a sounding board for Freud’s newly
developing ideas

• During the late 1890s, Freud suffered both

professional isolation and personal crises.

1. He had begun to analyze his own dreams, and

after the death of his father in 1896,he initiated
the practice of analyzing himself daily.

2. His realization that he was now middle-aged

and had yet to achieve the fame he so
passionately desired.
• During this time he had suffered yet another
disappointment in his attempt to make a major
scientific contribution

• Neuroses have their etiology in a child’s

seduction by a parent
 WHY DID FREUD ABANDON HIS ONCE-
TREASURED SEDUCTION THEORY?

1. The seduction theory had not enabled him to

successfully treat even a single patient.

2. A great number of fathers, including his own,

would have to be accused of sexual perversion

3. The unconscious mind could not probably

distinguish reality from fiction

4. The unconscious memories of advanced

psychotic patients almost never revealed early
childhood sexual experience
• Ernest Jones believed that Freud suffered from a
severe psychoneurosis during the late 1890s

• Max Schur contended that his illness was due to a

cardiac lesion, aggravated by addiction to
nicotine
• Peter Gay suggested that during the time
immediately after his father’s death, Freud
“relived his oedipal conflicts with peculiar
ferocity”
• Henri Ellenberger describe this period in Freud’s life
as a time of “creative illness” a condition
characterized by depression, neurosis, psychosomatic
ailments, and an intense preoccupation with some
forms of creative activity.
• Despite difficulties, Freud completed his greatest
work “Interpretation of Dreams (1900)”

WHY DID FREUD HAVE DIFFICULTIES WITH SO

MANY FORMER FRIENDS?

“it is not the scientific differences that are so

important; it is usually some other kind of
animosity, jealousy or revenge, that gives impulse
to enmity. The scientific differences come later”

• “On Dreams” 1901 – written because

Interpretation of Dreams had failed to capture
much interest
• “Psychopathology of Everyday Life” 1901 which
introduced the world to freudian slips

• “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality” 1905

which established sex as the cornerstone of
psychoanalysis

“Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconcious” 1905

which proposed that jokes, like dreams and
freudian slips, have an unconsicous meaning.

• Wednesday Psychological Society (1902) >Vienna

Psychoanalytic Society (1908)
• Freud, Alfred Adler, Wilhelm Stekel, Max Kahane
and Rudolf Reitler

• In 1910, Freud and his followers founded the

International Psychoanalytic Association with Carl
Jung as president

• The seeds of disagreement between Jung and

Freud were probably sown when the two men,
along with Sandor Ferenczi, traveled to the US in
1909.
• During WWI years, Freud was cut off from
communication with his followers, his
psychoanalytic practice dwindled, and he and his
family had little food.
 WHAT PERSONAL QUALITIES DID FREUD
POSSESS?

• Sensitive, passionate person who had the

capacity for intimate, almost secretive friendship.

• Had no sexual intercourse for several years after

his youngest child born.
• Use of a condom, coitus interruptus and
masturbation were unhealthy sexual practices.

• Freud had an intense and somewhat irrational

dislike of America and Americans
1. He believed that Americans would trivialize
psychoanalysis by trying to make it popular

“Freund”

• Freud experienced chronic indigestion and

diarrhea throughout his visit to US

2. Several Americans addressed him as Doc or

Sigmund while challenging him to defend his
theories
 Psychoanalysis

• Freuds inquiry of personality development began

with treating people who had symptoms that
had no physical causes.

• He believed that the personality is influenced by

the influenced by the unconscious – comprised of
wishes, inner conflicts and memories that we are
unaware of but that still affect our behavior
 Cornerstones
“Sex & Aggression”
 Levels of Mental Life

“People are motivated primarily by drives of which

they have little or no awareness”
 A. Unconscious
• The unconscious contains all those drives, urges,
or instincts that are beyond our awareness but
that nevertheless motivate most of our words,
feelings, and actions.

• Often enter only after being disguised or

distorted to elude censorship
 Two sources of unconscious processes

1.Repression

2. Phylogenetic Endowment – experiences of our

early ancestors that have been passed on to us
through hundreds of generations of repetitions.

- “Last resort”
• Unconscious drives may appear in consciousness,
but only after undergoing certain
transformations.

• Unconscious ideas can and do motivate people

 B. Preconscious
• Contains all those elements that are not
conscious but can become conscious either quite
readily or with some difficulty

• The contents of the preconscious come from two

sources
 Conscious perception
 Unconscious
 C. Conscious
• Those mental elements in awareness at any given
point in time.

• Ideas can reach consciousness from two different

directions.
– Perceptual conscious system, which is what
we perceive through our sense organs, if not
too threatening, enters into consciousness
– Within the mental structure includes
nonthreatening ideas from the preconscious
as well as menacing but well-disguised images
from the unconscious
Provinces of the Mind
 The Id
• It has no contact with reality, yet it strives
constantly to reduce tension by satisfying basic
desires.

• It serves the pleasure principle

• The id is not immoral, merely amoral.

• To accomplish its aim of avoiding pain and

obtaining pleasure, the id has at its command
two processes.
 Primary process
 Secondary processes
 The Ego
• It is governed by the reality principle

• The decision-making or executive branch of

personality.

• Because the id is partly conscious, partly

preconscious and partly unconscious, the ego can
make decisions on each of these three levels.

• Finding itself surrounded on three sides by

divergent and hostile forces, the ego reacts in a
predictable manner – it becomes anxious.
• Said to obey the reality principle and to operate by
means of the secondary process.

• Executive of the personality

 The Superego
• Guided by the moralistic and idealistic principles

• Moral arm of personality

• Subsystems of the superego

• Conscience – punishment
• Ego-ideal – reward

• Introjection
• Main functions:
• To inhibit the impulses of the id
• To persuade the ego to substitute moralistic
goals for realistic ones.
• To strive for perfection
 Dynamics of Personality
People are motivated to seek pleasure and
to reduce tension and anxiety.

Drives Sex

Aggression Anxiety
 Drives
• Operate as a constant motivational force

• Characteristics:
– Impetus – the amount of force exerted
– Source – region of the body in a state of
excitation or tension
– Aim – to seek pleasure by removing that
excitation or reducing the tension
– Object – the person or object
 Sex
• The aim is pleasure, but is not limited to genital
satisfaction.

Forms
1. NARCISSISM

• Primary Narcissism - libido is invested in their ego

• Secondary Narcissism – redirect the libido back to
the ego and become preoccupied with personal
appearance and other self-interest
 2. LOVE

• Develops when people invest their libido on

an object or person other than themselves.

3. SADISM

• Is the need for sexual pleasure by inflicting pain

or humiliation on another person

4. MASOCHISM

• Experience sexual pleasure from suffering pain

and humiliation inflicted either by themselves or
by others.
 Aggression
• The aim of the destructive drive is to return the
organism to an inorganic state. Because the
ultimate inorganic condition is death, the final
aim of the aggressive drive is self-destruction

Anxiety
• It is a felt, affective, unpleasant state
accompanied by a physical sensation that warns
the person against impending danger.
 Kinds

Neurotic anxiety
• apprehension about an unknown danger
• these feelings of hostility are often accompanied by fear of
punishment, and this fear becomes generalized into
unconscious neurotic anxiety.

Moral anxiety
•stems from the conflict between the ego and the superego.

Realistic anxiety
•an unpleasant, nonspecific feeling involving a possible danger
 Defense Mechanisms
• A process used by the ego to distort reality and
protect a person from anxiety.
• Common characteristics
1. They deny, distort and falsify reality
2. They operate unconsciously so that the person
is not aware of what is taking place.
 Repression
“forces threatening feelings into the
unconscious”
 Displacement
“redirecting of unacceptable urges onto a variety of
people or objects”
 Fixation
“is the permanent attachment of the libido
onto an earlier stage of development”
 Regression
“reverting back to
the earlier stage”
 Difference

Fixation Regression

permanent” temporary
 Projection

“seeing in others
unacceptable
feelings or
tendencies that
actually reside in
one’s own
unconscious”
 Introjection
“incorporating of positive qualities of
another person into their own ego”
 Reaction Formation
“adopting a disguise that is directly opposite
its original form”
 Compensation
“overachieving in one way to compensate
for shortcomings in another”
 Intellectualization
“perceiving objects in objective or clinical
way with emphasis on intellectual”
component”
 Rationalization
“an acceptable or feeling is explained in a
rational or logical manner while avoiding the
true motives for the behavior”
1. Sour-graping
2. Sweet-lemoning
 Sublimation
“allows us to act out unacceptable impulses
by converting these behaviors into a more”
acceptable form
O A Pha La Ge
 Ph
O A La Ge
a
Stages of Psychosexual Development

Oral Anal Phallic Latency Genital

Stage Stage Stage Stage Stage
 Oral Phase (0 – 18 months)
– Their first autoerotic experience is thumb
sucking
– Oral dependent personality
– Oral aggressive personality
– Erogenous zone: Mouth
 Anal Phase (18 mos. – 3 yrs)
• Attention turns to process
of elimination
• Child can gain approval
or express aggression by
letting go or holding on.
Ego develops
• Erogenous zone: anus
Phallic Phase ( Ages 3 - 6)
• Awakening of sexuality
• Male Oedipus Complex
– Castration complex
- castration anxiety
or the fear of losing
the penis
– Once his Oedipus
complex is dissolved
or repressed, the boy
surrenders his
incestuous desires,
changes them into
feelings of tender
love, and begins to
develop a primitive
superego.
• Female Oedipus Complex
– Penis envy
– Simple female Oedipus complex - The desire
for sexual intercourse with the father and
accompanying feelings of hostility for the
mother
• When pre-Oedipal girls acknowledge their
castration and recognize their inferiority to boys,
they will rebel in one of three ways:
• they may give up their sexuality develop an
intense hostility toward their mother
Latency Period ( Ages 6 - 12)
• If parental
suppression is
successful, children
will repress their
sexual drive and
direct their psychic
energy toward
school, friendships,
hobbies, and other
nonsexual
activities.
 Genital Period ( Ages 12+)
• Pleasure is gained through sexual intercourse with non-
relatives
• Give up autoeroticism
• Ability of people to direct their libido outward rather
than onto the self represent the major distinctions
between infantile and adult sexuality
 Application

• Free association
• Transference - the strong sexual or aggressive
feelings, positive or negative, that patients
develop toward their analyst during the course
of treatment
– Negative transference in the form of hostility
must be recognized by the therapist and
explained to patients so that they can
overcome any resistance to treatment
• Resistance - a variety of unconscious responses
used by patients to block their own progress in
therapy
• Dream analysis – used to transform the manifest
content of dreams to the moreimportant latent
content.
– Manifest content - the surface meaning or the
conscious description given by the dreamer
– Latent content - unconscious material.
– Forms of dream distortions:
• Condensation – when a part of something
symbolizes the whole thing.
• Synthesis – when an idea contained in the
manifest content of a dream is actually a
combination of many ideas in the latent content.
• Dislocation – displacement of unacceptable ideas
to something that is symbolically equivalent and
acceptable.
 .
– Three anxiety dreams:
a. Embarrassment dream of nakedness
b. Dreams of the death of a beloved person
c. Dreams of failing an examination
4. Freudian or unconscious slips (Parapraxes)
Criteria for evaluating a theory

Generate research

Low in its openness to falsification

Very loose organizational framework

Not a good guide to solve practical problems

Low on internal consistency

Theory is difficult to test

 Concept of humanity

Deterministic

Pessimistic

Causality over teleology

Unconscious over conscious

Biology over culture

Equal emphasis on uniqueness and similarity