Freudian_Psychoanalysis_

What in your opinion is the most important Metapsychology concept of Freudian psychoanalysis' The purpose of writing this essay is to give my opinion on what I consider to be the most important metapsychological concept of Freudian psychoanalysis. Freudian’s papers on metapsychology were written between 1915 and 1917 and cover a wide range of the concepts that evolved out of his thinking, entailing his theories on neuroses, psychosexual development, instincts, personality structures, etc. Like any other subjects of study, metapsychology is not committed to a specific method, or to a fixed belief system. It is the study of the origin, structure, and function of the mind and its relationship with the spirit and the physical universe, while encompassing the person’s abilities and experiences, from Freud’s point of view. In the words of Freud over a century ago, "I may use the name of metapsychology for any psychology that leads behind consciousness."[1] In this essay, I would like to describe and develop the theory of the “Unconscious,” to substantiate my opinion that Freud’s theory of the “Unconscious” was in fact the most important metapsychological concept that he developed. As part of this, I will also take a look at the process of how he developed free association to access the unconscious. Freud believed that this provided the gateway for the unconscious to be brought into the light. Furthermore, he had a particular fascination for dreams and he indicated they were a privilege access to the unconscious. For Freud, the unconscious was a depository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression. However, the contents did not necessarily have to be solely negative. Finally, I will refer to resistance and repression, as they are major links to the unconscious. In his book, “Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis,” Freud points out that his analysis of patients, “shows us that they have been carried back to some particular period of their past by the systems of their illness or their consequences.”[2] Reviewing his own and Brewer’s clinical experience, Freud discovered a consistent theme of sexuality underline each one of their cases. Repressed sexuality was the unconscious denial of a forbidden sexual wish or an experience. This conclusion was so evident to Freud that he acknowledged not only its impact on the individual but also the existence of the unconscious in the mind. He again stated that “Symptoms are never constructed from consciousness processes, and as soon as the unconscious process concerned have become conscious, the symptoms must then disappear.” [3] Although Freud wasn’t the first to recognise the unconscious, however, he was the first to study it in such depth. His psychoanalytic system is a model of personality development and is an approach to psychotherapy. One of Freud’s most important strengths is that he relied heavily upon his observations and case studies of his patients for his theories. Furthermore, throughout his life he made room in his concepts for any new material, which might emerge. As a result of this he developed a model of the mind in 1912, which he called the Topographic Model. Later he went on to expand this as his second model of the mind and it became known as the Structural Model of Personality in 1923. Freud's first model, the topographic model, divided the mental processes into three types: conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. Conscious mental process entails rational, goal-directed thoughts at the center of awareness. It includes everything that we are aware of at any particular moment, such as your present perceptions, memories, thoughts or fantasies. Working closely with the conscious mind is what Freud called the preconscious and it entails available memory, but also anything that can be easily made conscious, as well as the memories you are not thinking about at the moment but can readily bring to mind. This is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about rationally. It includes our memory, which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily at any time and brought into our awareness. Freud called this ordinary memory the preconscious. He further indicated that preconscious mental processes are not conscious but could become conscious at any point, such as knowledge of the colour of robins.[4] Finally, unconscious mental processes are irrational, organized along associative lines rather than by logic. They are inaccessible to consciousness because they have been repressed, that is, kept from consciousness to avoid emotional distress. It is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that exist outside of our conscious awareness. Most of the contents of the unconscious are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict. The unconscious influences our behaviors and experiences, even though we are unaware of these underlying influences, since they are outside of our unconscious awareness. In other words, these are feelings of traumatic memories of painful experiences, which were not resolved when they occurred but instead repressed. Unconscious processes, while barred from consciousness, are not inert. Because they are not consciously acknowledged, they may leak into consciousness, and affect behavior in unexpected and often unwelcome ways, as in slips of the tongue. Freud used the topographic model to understand dreams, distinguishing between their story line, the manifest content, and their underlying message, which is the hidden content. However, unpleasant feelings as well as unresolved situations from the past are the kinds of feelings that have been repressed. Freud embarked on a process to search for clues to understand a neurosis, which is recognised as disorders of the pattern of thoughts, feeling and behaviour. He believed that these develop during the life of the individual and tend to limit and disable the capacity for a normal existence in the interval’s life. Freud’s Structural Model of Personality entails three elements, the id, the ego, and the superego, which work together to create complex human behaviors. The id is the only component of personality that is present from birth. This aspect of personality is entirely unconscious and contains instincts and drives. According to Freud, the id is the source of all psychic energy, making it the primary component of personality. It is also driven by the pleasure principle, which strives for immediate gratification of all desires, wants, and needs. If these needs are not satisfied immediately, the result is a state anxiety or tension. For example, an increase in hunger or thirst should produce an immediate attempt to eat or drink. The id is very important early in life, because it ensures that an infant’s needs are met. If the infant is hungry or uncomfortable, he or she will cry until the demands of the id are met. However, immediately satisfying these needs is not always realistic or even possible. If we were ruled entirely by the pleasure principle, we might find ourselves grabbing food out of other people’s hands to satisfy our own cravings. This sort of behavior would be both disruptive and socially unacceptable. According to Freud, the id tries to resolve the tension created by the pleasure principle through the primary process, which involves forming a mental image of the desired object as a way of satisfying the need. The ego is the component of personality that is responsible for dealing with reality. According to Freud, the ego develops from the id and ensures that the impulses of the id can be expressed in a manner acceptable in the real world. The ego functions in the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious mind. The ego operates based on the reality principle, which strives to satisfy the id’s desires in realistic and socially appropriate ways. The reality principle weighs the costs and benefits of an action before deciding to act upon or abandon impulses. In many cases, the id’s impulses can be satisfied through a process of delayed gratification. However, the ego will eventually allow the behavior, but only at the appropriate time and place. The last component of personality to develop is the superego. The superego is the aspect of personality that holds all of our internalized moral standards and ideals that we acquire from both parents and society, our sense of right and wrong. The superego provides guidelines for making judgments. According to Freud, the superego begins to emerge at around age five. The ego ideal includes the rules and standards for good behaviors. These behaviors include those, which are approved of by parental and other authority figures. Obeying these rules leads to feelings of pride, value, and accomplishment. The superego acts to perfect and civilize our behavior. It works to suppress all unacceptable urges of the id and struggles to make the ego act upon idealistic standards rather that upon realistic principles. The superego is present in the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. With so many competing forces, it is easy to see how conflict might arise between the id, ego, and superego. Freud used the term ego strength to refer to the ego’s ability to function despite these dueling forces. A person with good ego strength is able to effectively manage these pressures, while those with too much or too little ego strength can become too unyielding or too disrupting. Moreover, according to Freud a healthy personality is seen as one with a strong ego capable of working out compromises between the three forces enabling the individual to adjust to the real world while at the same time gratifying at least partially the demands of the id.[5] According to Freud, the concepts of the unconscious mental activity, repression and resistance were the fundamental pillars of psychoanalysis. Freud views resistance, as an unconscious dynamic that people use to defend against anxiety and pain, that would arise if they were to become aware of their repressed impulses and feelings. This was further highlighted in the following quote. “Indeed we come finally to understand that the overcoming of these resistances is the essential function of analysis and is the only part of our work which gives us an assurance that we have achieved something with the patient”.[6] Furthermore, he recognised resistance took from the patient’s inability to cooperate. “The essence of repression lies simply in turning something away and keeping it at a distance, from the conscious”.[7] Therefore repression does not exit from the very beginning as a defence mechanism; it is only when conscious and unconscious separate from each other that repression can be established. Freud said that the goal of therapy is simply “to make the unconscious conscious." Free association means that the patient talks about whatever comes into mind without censoring or editing the flow of ideas or memories. Free association allows the patient to return to earlier or more childlike emotional states ("regress"). Regression is sometimes necessary in the formation of the therapeutic alliance. It also helps the analyst to understand the recurrent patterns of conflict in the patient's life. Moreover, he points out that insight entails being aware of the source of the emotion, of the original traumatic event. The major portion of the therapy is completed when insights are experienced. What should have happened many years ago, because the person was too young to deal with the issue, or had too many conflicting pressures, has now happened, and thereby the person is enabled to become a more authentic person. However, in his system of psychoanalysis, Freud had incorporated the concept of “the talking cure", from his own mentor Josef Breuer. It was based on a recalling or re-experiencing of those stressful or disturbing situations or events which precipitated a neurosis. Freud noted that the key to a recent disturbance lay in an earlier, similar trauma, sometimes an entire "chain" of traumatic incidents. This is the foundation for the theory and procedures developed by others later to form part of the subject of metapsychology. Unconscious conflicts over repressed wishes have a tendency to manifest themselves in dreams, parapraxes ("Freudian slips"), and symptoms. In the “Psychopathology of Everyday Life,” Freud describes different forms of parapraxes and gives many examples to illustrate them. In spite of their diversity, all of these phenomena are the result of one psychological mechanism similar to that, which underlies dreams, moreover, they are the expression of a wish, which until that point had been repressed, but the nature of it can be discovered thanks to the free association method. A parapraxis is a slip of the tongue, often called a Freudian slip. Freud felt that they were also clues to unconscious conflicts. Freud was also interested in the jokes his clients told. In fact, Freud felt that almost everything meant something almost all the time, e.g. dialing a wrong number, making a wrong turn, misspelling a word, were serious objects of study for Freud.[8] Many of us have experienced what is commonly referred to as a Freudian slip. These misstatements are believed to reveal underlying, unconscious thoughts or feelings. Consider this example: Jack has just started a new relationship with a woman he met at school. While talking to her one afternoon, he accidentally calls her by his ex-girlfriend’s name. If you were in this situation, how would you explain this mistake' Many of us might blame the slip on distraction or describe it as a simple accident. However, a psychoanalytic theorist might tell you that this is much more than a random accident. The psychoanalytic view holds that there are inner forces outside of your awareness that are directing your behavior. For example, a psychoanalyst might say that Jack misspoke due to unresolved feelings for his ex or perhaps because of misgivings about his new relationship. “Interpretation of Dreams,” published in November 1899, presented Freud’s revolutionary theories stating that, although unconscious, a part of the human mind exists which affects a person in profound ways. Freud observed that it was his fate to "agitate the sleep of mankind," and that he did! Freud theorized that dreams are vital keys to unlocking the mysteries of an individual’s personality, motivations, and overall psyche. Dreams are not meaningless or random events. All dreams have causes, generally from emotionally charged life events. Consequently, the individual cannot deal directly with their issues because they are treating to their ego. Dream content is mostly composed of sex, aggression, wish fulfillment, and childhood memories. In addition, it is a façade disguising anxiety or guilt. To understand the dream, it is imperative to look past the façade to discover the real issue. Psychoanalytical techniques, including free association, can be used to interpret dreams. In this work, he outlined his ideas about the construction of the mind and human personality. Having theorized this framework of human personality, Freud used it to demonstrate how instinctual drives are inevitably confounded with strictly social codes (by the ego) and by notions of morality (by the superego). This conflict, psychoanalytic theory supposes, is at the heart of anxiety and neuroses. In dealing with these conflicts, Freud's psychoanalytic theory suggests that the human mind constructs three forms of adaptive mechanisms: namely, defense mechanisms, neurotic symptoms, and dreams. Freud believed dreams were vivid representations of repressed urges and that the id spoke out in wildly incongruous nighttime parables. In addition, he considered dreams to have two parts, encompassing the manifest content which is the narrative that is remembered upon waking, as well as the latent content entailing the underlying, largely symbolic message. Psychoanalysis deals with dream interpretation since Freud believed dreams to represent unfulfilled longings of the id. In sleep, we are somewhat less resistant to our unconscious and thus we allow new things, in symbolic form, of course, to come to awareness. These wishes from the id provide the therapist and client with more clues. Many forms of therapy make use of the client's dreams, but Freudian interpretation is distinct in his tendency to find sexual meanings. Repression involves the ego blocking the retrieval of painful memories so that they cannot come into consciousness. Fear that these blocks will not work may also be a source of anxiety! Freud introduced the concept of repression into psychoanalytic theory and its validity is still very much debated. He described repression as "...the function of rejecting and keeping something out of consciousness." He theorized that people repress, or intentionally forget, painful memories to protect their conscious minds from experiencing them again. Most therapists would agree that memory is subjective and that the actual details of memories are clouded through time, but whether people actually repress memories is up for debate. Freud himself emphasized emotion over content in his discussions of repression. Freud believed that “the interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.”[9] The purpose of this was to examine any material that came from a deeper, less defended level of the individual’s personality. He believed that every dream is a fulfilment of a wish that is repressed in the unconscious and that they are disguised. Freud was an excellent observer of the human condition and even today his theory on the unconscious continues to play a centeral part in all therapeutic approaches. As result of my study of Freud’s theories, I have come to the realisation that the “Unconscious” is the most important metapsychological concept in Freudian Psychoanalysis. While his theories were considered shocking at the time and continue to create debate and controversy, his work had a profound influence on a number of disciplines, including psychology, sociology anthropology, literature and art, his theories had an enormous impact and most importantly is work supported the belief that not all mental illnesses have physiological causes. In addition, he also offered evidence that cultural differences have an impact on psychology and behavior. Thus, his work and writings contributed, to our understanding of personality and human development. . ----------------------- [1] Frued, Sigmund. Papers on metapsychology written between 1915 and 1017. In The Standard Edition of The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.” S.E. London: Hogarth Press. 1915c. p.109-140. [2] Frued, Sigmund. 1962. Introduction to Lectures on Psychoanalysis. London. Penguin. P. 314. [3] Frued, Sigmund. 1962. Introduction to Lectures on Psychoanalysis. London. Penguin. P. 320 [4]Frued, Sigmund. The Unconscious, in. in “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.” S.E. London: Hogarth Press. 1915c. 159. [5] Dryden, Windy. 2002. A Handbook of Individual Psychotherapy. (4th. Ed.) London: Sage Publication. p. 20-21. [6] Frued, Sigmund. 1962. Introduction to Lectures on Psychoanalysis. London. Penguin. P. 332 [7] Frued, Sigmund. Papers on Metapsychology written between 1915 and 1017. In “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.” S.E. London: Hogarth Press. 1915c. p. 147. [8]Freud, Sigmund. Psychopathology of Everyday Life in “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud” S.E. London: Hogarth Press. 1901b. p. 239. [9] Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dream in “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud” S.E. London: Hogarth Press. 1900a. p.608.