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Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalytic Therapy

Freud believed the foundation of personality is formed during early childhood and mental illness occurs when unpleasant childhood experiences are repressed, or kept from consciousness, because they are painful. Psychoanalytic therapy tries to uncover these repressed thoughts; in this way the patient is cured.

Freud's primary method of treatment was free association, in which the patient is instructed to say anything and everything that comes to mind. Freud found that patients would eventually start talking about dreams and painful early childhood memories. Freud found dreams especially informative about the person's unconscious wishes and desires. In fact he called dreams the "royal road to the unconscious." The patient and analyst then try to understand what these memories, feelings, and associations mean to the patient.

Resources

Books

Barron, James W., Morris H. Eagle, and David L. Wolitzky, eds. Interface of Psychoanalysis and Psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1992.

Greenberg, Jay R., and Stephen A. Mitchell. Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.

Periodicals

Hyman, S.E. "The Genetics of Mental Illness: Implications for Practice." Bulletin of the World Health Organization 78 (April 2000): 455-463.

Marie Doorey

KEY TERMS

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Ego: —Mental processes that deal with reality and try to mediate between the id and the environment.
Free association: —Method used in psychoanalytic therapy to bring unconscious memories to awareness. The patient tells the psychoanalyst everything he or she thinks of.
Id: —Unconscious mental processes containing instincts that dominate personality.
Instincts: —Mental representations of bodily needs that direct thought.
Pleasure principle: —The avoidance of pain and seeking of pleasure which the id performs.
Primary process: —Wish-fulfilling images formed by the id.
Psychoanalysis: —A theory of personality, method of psychotherapy, and approach to studying human nature, begun by Sigmund Freud.
Psychosexual development: —Five stages of development humans pass through: oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital.
Reality principle: —Rational, realistic thinking the ego operates according to.
Superego: —Mental processes concerned with morality as taught by parents.
Unconscious: —That which we are unaware of. Ruler of behavior containing all instincts and thoughts we are unaware of.

Additional topics

Science EncyclopediaScience & Philosophy: Propagation to Quantum electrodynamics (QED)Psychoanalysis - History, Personality Theory, Personality Organization, Personality Development, Psychoanalytic Therapy