What is Psychoanalytic Theory (Psychoanalysis)?

hello this is dr. grande today's question is what is psychoanalytic theory so psychoanalytic theory is a talk therapy modality that was developed by Sigmund Freud and it needs to be differentiated from psychodynamic theory psychodynamic theory includes psychoanalytic theory as well as the work that's been done since Sigmund Freud's work so the Neo Freudians psychodynamic theory of course uses many of the same principles we see in psychoanalytic theory but they're not exactly the same thing now the process of using psychoanalytic theory is referred to as psychoanalysis that's the actual treatment and it has several components to

it that are fairly distinct from other therapeutic modalities the first is the idea of levels of awareness in psychoanalytic theory there are three levels of awareness conscious preconscious and unconscious so the conscious mind contains information that someone's thinking right now it's what they're aware of right this moment the pre conscious mind contains information that is retrievable but not in conscious awareness so a type of memory it's information that somebody can readily access but it's not going through their mind right now and then we have the unconscious mind now in psychoanalytic theory the unconscious mind is

the largest that contains the most information it contains information about frightening experiences painful experiences or drives or urges that are unacceptable Society there's also a lot of other information in the unconscious mind as well but that's really what we look at in terms of psychedelic theory as it contains undesirable unacceptable urges now the key feature of the unconscious mind is it's not accessible so it's not like the pre conscious mind where somebody just has to think about it and retrieve those memories the material in the unconscious mind you not directly retrievable an individual is not

aware of what's stored in the unconscious mind in the psychoanalytic theory all symptoms come from unresolved unconscious conflicts the next component we have is the psyche and in psychoanalytic theory the psyche is divided into three components the first component to develop is the it'd then the ego then the super-ego now the it'd is focused just on basic needs the it doesn't have any regard for consequences so for instance when we think of an infant in psychoanalytic theory they are all it it's all about meeting the basic needs now the it'd has two components to it

two instincts there's the eros and a Santos the eros is the life instinct the phantos is the death instinct so the eros is focused on survival so it has components like eating breathing and having sex Thanatos is focused on self-destruction so again it's the death instinct violence and aggression Freud believed that the eros was more powerful and most people than the Thanatos so generally people would move in a positive direction they would move toward survival now the next component to develop is the ego but I'm gonna come back to this in a moment and move

to the super-ego which is the last component of the psyche to develop the super-ego contains morality it's the rules of society so it looks to satisfy those rules to stay in line with those rules now regulating the basic needs the basic drives of the it'd and morality from the super-ego we have the ego so the ego is a mediator between the it'd and the super-ego it functions on the reality principle it tries to balance those basic needs with morality when the ego fails we have defense mechanisms which I'll get to in a moment so the

next component of psychoanalytic theory is the psychosexual stages and according to Freud there were five stages of development oral anal phallic latency and genital the genital stage was the last stage and Freud believed this stage was entered in the late teens so really his developmental model ends fairly early when compared to an entire lifetime so as I mentioned before according to Freud all symptoms were because of unresolved unconscious conflicts these conflicts occur at these different psychosexual stages they are unresolved conflicts within a stage so the idea of any particular psychosexual stage is to successfully resolve

the conflict that comes with that stage and move on to the next stage when a problem occurs in terms of a conflict not being resolved a person can become stuck at that stage or have other problems even if they move on to another stage when we look at how psychoanalytic theory is accepted or not accepted by therapists to how it's used a lot of times we see that the psychosexual stages are not really accepted the preferred model for I think many therapists would be Erik Erikson's model which again is based on resolving conflicts but it

has more depth to it than we see with the psychosexual stages from Freud I think that the idea of the conscious preconscious unconscious the it'd you go and super-ego tend to make sense to individuals even if they don't necessarily believe in the theory but the psychosexual stages probably take that a little too far for a lot of people to accept it seems like an incomplete model of development so I mentioned before that problems come about when the ego fails that's when we see were referred to as defense mechanisms now Freud had developed a number of

defense mechanisms and in the psychodynamic theory there are many more that were added now defense mechanisms are thought to lower anxiety but eventually can lead to function if they're overused if the ego over depends on them and the whole idea of defense mechanisms is that material is in the unconscious mind unacceptable drives and urges and the ego is trying to find some way to deal with it so the job of a defense mechanism is to protect the ego so really all defense mechanisms are about putting material in the unconscious mind or keeping it there so

let's take a look briefly a few of the defense mechanisms few of the popular ones we have denial and denial is when someone won't acknowledge something that's true so when you think about denial in terms of psychoanalytic theory the person really doesn't understand that whatever is true is true the material that would help them understand that something is true is trapped in the unconscious mind next we have sublimation and sublimation is when undesirable urges are converted into a useful career or a useful hobby then we have displacement and one of the popular examples of displacement

is when an individual is bullied and they develop aggressive feelings toward that bully but they take out those feelings on someone who is not intimidating so they're displacing that aggression intended for the bully to someone else next we have regression and regression is tied in with these psychosexual stages what happens with regression is that an individual moves to an earlier stage and they adopt the behaviors that are consistent with that stage and potentially revisit the conflicts with that stage as well so regression is moving back to an earlier stage of development now fixation the next

defense mechanism is when somebody gets stuck at a particular stage so they stay within that conflict that's consistent with that stage and don't move forward and then we have repression so repression is really arguably the most important defense mechanism because the goal of all defense mechanisms is to accomplish some degree of oppression repression is when material from the conscious mind or the pre conscious mind is moved over into the unconscious mind and a person becomes unaware of it so repressed material is outside of a person's awareness as I mentioned there are a number of defense

mechanisms those are just a few that I think are particularly important now moving one to the techniques of psychoanalytic theory what techniques are used well there are a variety of techniques there were a few that Freud developed that he really emphasized but actually psychoanalytic theory has a number of techniques and there's a lot of diversity in these techniques so the first one is catharsis now catharsis is a technique that we see used a number of therapeutic modalities and that's where there's an emotional release so sometimes what catharsis we associate this with crying but there's a

lot of other feelings emotions and behaviors tied in with catharsis the next technique is the interpretation of dreams Freud really emphasized the importance of dreams because he believed that dreams allowed individuals to see unconscious material to see material that was trapped in the unconscious mind so dream interpretation a key technique and so was free association now free association is when a person says whatever comes to mind it's kind of a spontaneous type of technique but Freud believed like dreams it helped a person to see unconscious material that the material trapped in unconscious mind would come

out during free association the next technique is resistance and really in psychoanalytic theory it's the analysis of resistance so when people talk about unacceptable urges and drives this material in the unconscious mind this becomes uncomfortable and they tend to resist the therapeutic process Freud would analyze this resistance as he believed this also information about what's going on in the unconscious mind and could lead to a resolution of that conflict the next technique is transference and transference in terms of the way for you looked at it was thought of as a type of resistance it's when

a client projects feelings they have towards somebody in their life onto the therapist for example if a client has a contentious relationship with their sister and they start treating the therapist as they would their sister so transference just moves in one direction from the client to the therapist and in psychoanalytic theory it's the analysis of the transference that's important which again makes sense because as a type of resistance and the analysis of resistance is important now counter transference is something totally different countertransference is not really a part of the treatment it's considered destructive that's when

the therapist projects feelings onto the client so in psychoanalytic theory transference was valuable and was analyzed and countertransference was avoided that was considered destructive a lot of times we see with other therapeutic modalities the concepts of transference and countertransference are used and usually they're conceptualized in a similar way transference can be useful and is really a natural para P and countertransference should be avoided because it has destructive potential the last technique I'll cover here is interpretation and really interpretation for Freud been interpreting all these different elements we see through the other techniques like dreams and

free association resistance transference a lot of elements of a client story would be interpreted so they wouldn't necessarily be taken at face value but Freud believed there was something else going on or something under the surface so he would listen to the narrative of a client but also think of what's going on in the unconscious mind so a psychoanalyst in essence is always looking to interpret they're always trying to dig a little deeper and see material that hidden so does psychoanalysis work is it an effective treatment of mental health symptoms well this is a bit

of a controversial issue there is evidence available that demonstrates that psychoanalysis is effective in treating mental health symptoms but there's not the same amount of evidence that we see with other more modern therapeutic modalities like for example types of cognitive behavioral therapy so psychoanalysis is in kind of a strange place right now I think it's accepted by a small group and used regularly but most practitioners don't really integrate a large number of psychoanalytic techniques into their practice again there are some areas of psychoanalysis which draw a lot of skepticism like the psychosexual stages but also

even the idea of defense mechanisms we have trouble there with research - it's very hard to study and prove that something like a defense mechanism exists so there's some controversy around psychoanalysis but generally it's been found to be somewhat effective the difficulty that psychoanalysis faces isn't just limited to how different it is as a therapeutic modality from a lot of other popular therapies really one of the problems is and how it's delivered a lot of times we look at a doubt is like one of the types of cognitive behavioural therapy for example we view it

as a treatment that goes on for maybe three months six months potentially a year sometimes a little more psychoanalysis is almost always framed in terms of the number of years it's considered a treatment that would continue for a long time it doesn't have a brief component to it or even a component that keeps it in line with the amount of time spent in another modern modality it's important when we consider a psychoanalytic theory to take into account the immense and important contribution that Freud made to understanding human behavior personality and to talk therapy even though

there are a number of people that disagree with how psychoanalytic theory conceptualizes all those things the contribution was really quite important we use different elements of psychoanalytic theory in a number of other theories even if the essence of psychedelic theory isn't carried over also allow the terms that Freud developed are commonly used now and other therapies as well I think this is one of the reasons why psychoanalytic theory is still studied so much today it's considered fundamental in training mental health clinicians I hope you found this description of psychoanalytic theory to be interesting thanks for

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