PSYCHOANALYSIS AND PSYCHODYNAMIC

THERAPY
 Psychosexual Stages of Development
1 – Oral
2 – Anal Pleasure zone or Seeking
3 – Phallic area in each
4 – Latency stage/phase gratification
5 - Genital

Obtaining
Stuck at a Fixation is a satisfaction
particular phase defense against dominates,
(Fixation) anxiety influencing adult
personality
 Oral Stage/Phase (Birth – 18 Months)
The infant’s chief source of libidinal
gratification centers around feeding (mouth,
lips, & tongue). When the infant’s oral needs
are satisfied (a state of satiety), the tension is
reduced, & he/she may fall asleep.
Deprivation during this stage is likely to result
in pessimism that one’s needs will not be met.
A child’s biting & spitting during the oral stage
have been related to oral aggressiveness
characteristics that include sarcasm, cynicism,
and argumentativeness.
Fixation due to either deprivation or
overindulgence leads to the development of
an oral personality that may have some of the
following characteristics: pessimism/
optimism, suspiciousness/gullibility, self-
belittlement/ cockiness, and passivity/
manipulativeness.
Children who depend overly on their
mothers during the oral phase may
fixate at this stage and become too
dependent during adult life. They often
find themselves dealing with
separation anxiety during adulthood.
 Anal Stage/Phase (18 Months – 3 Years)

Anal area becomes the main

source of pleasure for children.
They explore their bodily functions,
which may include touching and
playing with feces. Children
become fixated if their caregivers
are too demanding or
overindulgent.
The over-demanding or over-controlling parent
who forces toilet training too quickly or too
harshly tends to produce anal personality types
– stingy, constricted, & stubborn. When children
are toilet trained harshly, they learn that they will
be punished if they are not meticulous, neat,
and punctual.

If parents are too lenient, and the child gets

pleasure from expulsion of feces, such
parenting will result in the formation of an
anal expulsive character, who is generally
messy, disorganized, reckless, careless, and
defiant.
 Phallic Stage/Phase (3 years until 5 or 6 years)

The source of gratification shifts Oedipal Complex – to deal with his

from the anal region to the genital
region. The major conflict that
children experience during this
phase is over the object of their
sexual desire (boy – mother; girl –
father).
anxiety and fear of penis castration,
the boy learns to identify with his
father and to move from sexual to
nonsexual love for the mother.
Oedipus Rex – Greek play

Although Freud proposed initially that
girls suffered from an Electra
complex, wherein they desired their
fathers, he dropped this idea from his
later writings. He theorized that girls
suffer penis envy during this phase of
development.
Karen Horney questioned Freud’s theory
of penis envy. She claimed that
motherhood was a woman’s way of
compensating for her “organ inferiority”.
She suggested that it could be men who
were envious of the women’s ability to
bear children (womb envy)
Margaret Mead (American
Anthropologist) theorized that
when boys accept the fact that
they cannot bear children, they
compensate for this inferiority
by choosing to place a high
value on achievement.
 Phallic Stage/Phase (3 years until 5 or 6 years)
What allows both boys and girls to
successfully complete this phase is
identification with the same-sex parent,
which reduces the child’s anxiety over
his or her sexual desires for the parent.
People who experience difficulty
with the phallic phase may
experience later sexual identity
problems.
Such identification is believed to
foster the beginning of the
superego, the moral part of a
person’s personality.
Fixation at the phallic phase results
in the development of a phallic
personality, one who is reckless,
narcissistic, and excessively vain
and proud.
 Latency Stage/Phase (6 – 12 years)

The period in which the young child’s sexual

desire lies dormant. Children repress their Latency is a time for ego development
sexual energy and channel it into school, their and for learning the rules of society.
friends, sports, and hobbies.
 Genital Stage/Phase (around the age of 13)

Young people focus their sexual Psychoanalytic theory suggests that

energy (libido) toward people of people who are unable to make
the opposite sex (if heterosexual) psychological attachments during
or toward the same sex (if adolescence and young adulthood will
homosexual) manifest abnormal personality patterns.
 Structure of Personality
Supereg
Id Ego o
Operates under Follows the Nonrational, seeking
perfection &
the pleasure reality adherence to an ideal;
principle principle operates on the basis
of morality principle

No conscious
awareness, only Its function is to test
reality, plan, to think Represents parental
unconscious
logically, & to develop values and society’
behavior (consists plans for satisfying
of the driving standards
needs
forces)
Id

Ego Arising
conflicts Anxiety
Superego
 3 Kinds of Anxiety

Reality Neurotic Moral

Reality Anxiety

The fear comes from the external

world

It is appropriate to the situation

Neurotic Anxiety

Becomes afraid when unable to control

feelings or instincts (id)

It is a threat within us
Moral Anxiety

Anxious/afraid of violating parental or

societal standards

It is threat within us
Ego Defense Mechanisms – psychological
strategies used to cope with reality and to
maintain self-image; if infrequently used, can
serve as an adaptive value in reducing stress; if
frequently used, it becomes pathological, and
individuals develop a style of avoiding reality.
 Defense Mechanisms

Repression Serves to remove painful thoughts, memories, or feelings from conscious awareness by excluding
painful experiences excluding painful experiences or unacceptable impulses. Traumatic events, such
as sexual abuse, that occur in the first five years of life are likely to be repressed and unconscious.

Denial A way of distorting or failing to acknowledge what an individual thinks, feels, or sees.
Reaction Acting on the opposite extreme. For example, a woman who hates her husband may act with excessive
Formation love and devotion so that she will not have to deal with a possible threat to her marriage that could
come from disliking her husband.
Projection Attributing one’s own unacceptable feelings or thoughts to others. For example, a man who unhappily
married may believe that all of his friends are unhappily married and shares his fate. In this way, he
does not need to deal with the discomfort of his own marriage.

Displacement When anxious, individuals can place their feelings not on an object or person who may be dangerous,
but on those who may be safe.
Sublimation Somewhat similar to displacement, sublimation is the modification of a drive (usually sexual or
aggressive) into acceptable social behavior.
Rationalization To explain away a poor performance, a failure, or a loss, people may make excuses to lessen their
anxiety and soften the disappointment.
Regression To revert to a previous stage of development.
 Therapy Techniques

Free Dream
association analysis

Analysis of Analysis of
resistance transference
 Free Association

Allows the client to say It is founded on the

anything and everything
Cardinal that comes to mind
belief that one
association leads to
technique regardless of how silly,
painful, or meaningless it another that is deeper in
seems. the unconscious.

Permits clients to Slips of tongue are

abandon their usual analyzed for what they
ways of censoring or reveal about clients’
editing thoughts. feelings.
 Dream Analysis

Dreams are said to Manifest content –

The pathway to have 2 levels of surface meaning of
the unconscious content dreams

Help the client uncover

Latent content – disguised meanings by
deeper, hidden, & studying the symbol in
symbolic meaning the manifest content of
the dream.
 Analysis of Resistance
Some common client resistances
Resistance is the client’s include – not attending sessions,
reluctance to bring to arriving late, complaining about or Freud viewed resistance as
refusing to make payments for an unconscious situation
the surface of awareness service, censoring thoughts, clients use to defend against
unconscious material disrupting the free association anxiety.
that has been repressed. process, or refusing to report
dreams.

The therapist’s analysis of As analysis continues, clients

resistance is designed to
help client become aware of
the reasons for resistance so
that they can confront them.
may begin to feel less
threatened and more
capable of facing the painful
things that caused them to
resist treatment.
 Analysis of Transference
Clients re-experience Therapists interpret the
their early conflicts and Their love and hate for distorted displacements of
in transference identify therapists can become significant relationships
the therapist as a intense and block clients experience during
substitute for their therapeutic efforts. their transference onto the
parents. therapist.

Therapists interpret Analysis of transference During the interpretation of

clients’ buried feelings, helps clients gain insight transference, clients learn
traumatic conflicts, and into the influence of how to work through old
unconscious fixations of their past on their conflicts that hindered their
early childhood. present lives. psychological growth.
 The Concept of Countertransference

Unconscious attitude or behavior

Ex. A therapist may have difficulty
on the part of the therapist that
working with angry clients
is prompted by the therapist’s
because as a child she was
needs rather than the client’s
punished for being angry.
needs.

Psychotherapists must consider the

types of strong feelings, preferences,
assumptions, & expectations they bring
to the therapeutic relationship that
impede their effectiveness with clients.
 Features of Psychodynamic Therapy

Exploration of
Focus on affect & Identification of
attempts to avoid
expression of recurring themes
distressing
emotion and patterns
thoughts & feelings

Focus on
Discussion of past Exploration of
interpersonal
experience fantasy life
relations
 Ego Psychology

The function of the ego The ego has its own energies, &
it becomes a major force in the
is to adapt to & master development of a personality
an objective reality that is adaptive and competent

Individuals who have

Anna Freud’s and Erik
poor ego development
Erikson’s works form
are inadequately
the foundation of ego
prepared to adapt to
psychology
reality.
 Object Relations Theory
A newer form of psychoanalytic
therapy that entails exploring Donald Winnicott (1896-1971) –
clients’ internal, unconscious believed that the central feature of
identification and healthy development was rooted in
internationalizations of external relationship
objects

Holding environment –
physical and psychical space
within which an infant is
protected without knowing
that he/she is protected.