What is psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis one of the most popular theories in the study of the human mind and in the treatment of emotional conditions; A theory that has been so vituperated as well as its author Sigmund Freud for his study and interest in the structuring of the psyche, psychosexual development and in deep analysis of moral influence on the health of the human being. This is why in this Psychology-Online article we explain What is psychoanalysis, What are your treatment methods, your history and some of the most recognized authors in your study.

1. Definition of psychoanalysis in psychology
2. History of psychoanalysis
3. The word as a treatment method as the beginning of psychoanalysis
4. The beginning of theories of free association, the interpretation of dreams and psychosexual development
5. Authors of psychoanalysis
6. Psychoanalysis techniques
7. Psychoanalysis books

Definition of psychoanalysis in psychology

Psychoanalysis is a Theory about the human mind that serves to understand the unconscious, a therapeutic practice for mood problems, a research instrument and a profession. At the same time we could say that it is an intellectual, sociological, very complex phenomenon.

Psychoanalysis has been so vituperated by its proposal on the existence of the unconscious and psychosexual involvement in human behavior. Sigmund Freud, the precursor neurologist of psychoanalysis, proposed that human behavior and personality come from a constant interaction of psychological forces that operate at different levels of consciousness: Unconscious, preconconscious and conscious.

Although for several years psychoanalysis, as well as its author, has been pointed out of inoperative or ineffective by their own disciples and other health professionals, has managed to support and preserve its character essential in mental health, in social and medicine research (especially in idiopathic physical symptoms).

Psychoanalysis proposes research and treatment of emotional conflicts from a perspective of early life (childhood) of the person as well as the failed acts, the free association and the interpretation of dreams.

History of psychoanalysis

The scientific career of the neurologist Sigmund Freud begins in a diminishing time for the philosophy of nature, which conceived the universe as an organism consisting of forces and movements in perpetual contradiction. A principle of the metaphysical vision of reality was the well -known law of polarities, with which the existence of antithetical forces such as heat and cold, night and day, sleep and vigil was proposed. Freud then showed great enthusiasm for the Nature Philosophy, And his desire to study medicine was determined when he listened to the Carl Brühl conference on the comparative anatomy, where he also had the opportunity to read a fragment of the nature of the theologian C. Tobler. This happened in 1873, before Freud finished high school.

Josef Breuer It appears deeply associated with the starting phase of psychoanalysis at the rate of its collaboration with Sigmund Freud in the Hysteria research, For this same reason his name is eluded as a symbol of a remarkable researcher

The word as a treatment method as the beginning of psychoanalysis

It cannot be eluded that determinism and mechanism of Helmholtz school They had a constant and permanent influence on Freud's psychological theories, as well as in their prepsicoanálitic phase as in their entire path. This influence is evident in the investigations he did with Breuer.

Josef and Sigmund met at the end of 1870 and between 1882 and 1885 a fairly close friendship was formed where they shared various scientific interests in common. In 1890, due to the economic situation it was going through and due to the resistance to the Jews occupying important positions in the academy, Freud retired from the academic career devoting himself from now on as an salaried doctor of the physiology of the brain and neurology in the clinic prestigious of dr. Theodor Meynert. This is where Freud specializes in diseases of the nervous system and for his practice in the treatment of Patients with mental pathologies. He began to be interested and dedicated more and more to the study of these phenomena, especially in hysteria symptoms. This is where he discovers that in the word are the fundamental principles to reach the unconscious and thus achieve a cure to relieve the discomforts of their patients (Beliefs, fantasies, memories, conflicts, thoughts, ideals, desires, feelings and purposes). The more the depths of the patient's psyche were approaching the origin of his problems.

In this way, through his interpretations Freud helped to put in words what was in his unconscious starting from the hypothesis: where everything that is lived in child Determine our adult behaviors.

When the patient realizes what are the origins of his conflicts, he can begin to change the ideas about himself.

Sigmund Freud's first influences

Freud receives a scholarship to study in Paris with the famous neurologist Jean Martín Charcot. J. Charcot, the most influential French neurologist of the time gave importance of scientific interest to the Hysterical symptoms that until then had been considered simulation products. Charcot claimed that hysteria was the product of a hereditary degeneration of the brain and for this he used hypnosis methods In your treatment. He also demonstrated that hysterical symptoms could be caused and eliminated by hypnotic suggestion, which managed to establish a nature related to causal neurological factors.

At that time, any symptom that could not be explained was attributed to some kind of hysteria and having no apparent cure the doctors recommended electrotherapy, massages, thermal baths or rest. Here is also where Freud proposes that neurosis is a personality disorder And not a disease of the nervous system, so Freud neurosis arose from conflicts, unresolved situations or frustrations and manifests itself in our behaviors.

Charcot's knowledge intensified Sigmund Freud's interest in hysterical phenomena, but they also disappointed him when he realized that Charcot had no interest in the study of psychological mechanisms underlying symptoms.

In 1882 Breuer and Freud knew a variant of the hypnotic method. Charcot and Liébault used hypnosis to make psychic content conscious that until then had been inaccessible. Breuer and then Freud used hypnosis to interrogate the sick subject about the history of the emergence of his symptoms, which he could not communicate completely but partially in a state of vigil. Since then, Sigmund's interest in addressing the central structuring of his therapeutic interventions: the elaboration of the vital history of the subject.

In 1886 Freud returns from France to Vienna, and reunites with Breuer who confesses that he has treated a case of hysteria hypnotizing a patient, Berta Pappenhem (Anna O), a young woman who was paralyzed his legs and arms, he saw Bad, he coughed and did not understand when they talked. Freud prefers not to hypnotize her and let her speak to her mind (Fantasies, dreams, memories that were freely associated) and at the end of the story Anna or felt relieved, through the word begins its healing process - the free association-.

The beginning of theories of free association, the interpretation of dreams and psychosexual development

Freud discovers that free association is not the only way to reach the unconscious, but also dreams also express non -manifest desires. It is when in 1896 he writes his book "Interpretation of dreams". In this study it also explains that through dreams it is also possible address situations rooted in the unconscious.

In 1905 Freud published his investigations in three sexual theory essays. Here links pleasure with sublimation; Sexual desires are impulses looking for the first enjoyments we had. It is for this reason that Freud separates the genital of the sexual (men and women obtain sexual pleasure not only from the stimulation of the genital area but that all the surfaces of the body are erogenous zones).

Stages in psychosexual development

Freud proposed that people partially satisfy those desires in sexual life and dreams, this is how he distinguishes three stages in psychosexual development:

1. The oral stage Where the baby's greatest satisfaction is provided by food, therefore pleasure obtains it when sucking but when the mother removes her chest (wearing) the baby feels displeasure.
2. The anal stage: In the second stage the baby feels pleasure to release and retain.
3. The phallic stage o Stage three appears at three or four years when the boy discovers that leading the hands to the genital area obtains pleasure and the curiosity, anguish and confusion begins that cause the difference of the sexual anatomy of the child. Freud then proposes that it is up to 5 and 6 the child enters the phase of the Oedipus complex (the child's feelings towards the mother and the girl towards the father enter into struggle) feeling love and jealousy, rivalry and dependence. These feelings proposes Freud that will influence the formation of their character, their individualism and their sexual orientation.

The structure of the mind

During the First World War, Sigmund Freud continued looking for responses to a basic neurotic conflict: What we want vs what we do. This is where Freud proposes that all our behaviors were at the service of reducing this tension (lifting of psychic energy), postulating both his psyche model:

• The it: Primary impulses.
• The I: Acts as a guide to reality, unconscious impulse inhibitor which is what constitutes a defense mechanism.
• The superego: It is the look of the parents above their own.

Also during World War I, Freud exposed the difference between morals and moral awareness: he demonstrated that his theory could also be applied in society's behavior. Freud said that Morality had a superyoic load (an imposition) and that moral consciousness had roots in the repressed part of society.

Authors of psychoanalysis

To understand psychoanalysis it is essential to know its main representatives

1. Sigmund Freud (1859-1939)

Austrian neurologist of Jewish origin, precursor of psychoanalysis. He studied in Paris with the famous and renowned neurologist Jean Charcot, The use of hypnosis as a treatment of hysteria. When returning to Vienna with support from his former friend Josef Breuer develop the cathartic method. Through subsequent investigations it was replacing the use of hypnotic suggestion (catharsis) by the free association and the interpretation of dreams.

2. Carl Jung (1875-1961)

Psychiatrist and important collaborator and disciple of Sigmund Freud. Founder of the Deep psychology; His theory is interested in the functional relationship between the psyche and its products (their culture). So it is inclined in the use of the methodology of anthropological, philosophical, religious origin, interpretation of dreams, art and alchemy. In the following article the 8 personality types are exposed according to Jung.

3. Alfred Adler (1870-1937)

Austrian psychotherapist, collaborator and disciple of Sigmund Freud but like Jung separates from him and his theory for disagreement in his theoretical points. Founder of the School of Individual Psychology. Its main theories are: The inferiority and superiority complex. In addition, Adler was also an educator of recognized thinkers and therapists, although later they would also separate from their theoretical points: Viktor Frankl and Rudolf Allers. He exerted a great influence on large neopsychoanalists such as Erich Fromm, Gordon Allport, Karen Horney and Albert Ellis.

4. Melanie Klein (1882-1960)

Austrian psychoanalyst, contributed great ideas about child development from a psychoanalytic perspective.

5. Jacques Lacan (1901-1981)

French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He based his theories on the analysis of Freud's reading, adding elements to psychoanalysis such as philosophy, structural linguistics and structuralism. Lacan was considered the return to Freud, although also as someone who reinterpreted the Freudian concepts. He opposed many of the precepts of the International Psychoanalytic Association (such as the rejection of such extensive and daily sessions of Orthodox psychoanalysts, thus proposing shorter sessions), but also also pointed out to several psychoanalysts of their time having altered, misrepresented, partialized, partialized and distorted Freud's theory. One of his most important contributions was The unconscious as a language.

Psychoanalysis techniques

From a point in readings to Freud, it can be exposed that there are no psychoanalytic techniques, because no one can teach anyone to analyze or listen. Freud throughout his theory speaks of techniques, but he only exposes one as a basis of psychoanalysis: The free association. Unlike other theories (for example, gestalt with the empty chair, the exchange of roles, imaginary inductions).

The free association is that the analyzed Express in the sessions, all your ideas, All their occurrences, images, emotions, memories, feelings and thoughts as they present, without selecting them or structured even if what is said may seem meaningless, incoherent or of little interest.

Theoretical Base of the Free Association

Freud then exposes the free association as the fundamental rule of the psychoanalytic operation, with this we understand as Juan Manuel Martínez (2020) proposes there is a strict relationship between theory and practice; There are certain theoretical elements for Freud to propose the free association as a fundamental rule. In the Freudian model Those aspects or experiences that are very unpleasant for the system are repressed, That is, an eviction effort is made and this quickly makes them repressed content and therefore dynamically unconscious. With this we mean that if we wanted to access certain memories, we could not do it since they are out and inaccessible to consciousness. Thus Freud proposes that as symptomatic conformation is composed of the Return of all that repressed, The psychoanalytic clinical method would have to be a way of remembering that in a different way that the symptomatic repetition "remember-repeat and rework", since there is a clear opposition between remembering and repeating: when the repressed scene is put in words no longer repeat them symptomatically, and this is for the psychoanalytic approach the cure.

Free Association Function

Freud thought that the dynamic forces that make up the psychic apparatus (the unconscious is always fighting or pushing to leave and the defense always pushes in an opposite direction to prevent it from coming out). Then the free association method It is about trying to reduce defense and allow this unconscious content to come out.

Application of free association

In the Book of Psychopathology of Freud's daily life, it is proposed that there are certain compromise formations that allow this unconscious content to leave (for example the joke, lapse, failed act, symptom and sleep). What the free association does is favor that there is less control due to lack of defense about what is being said and that unconscious content emerges. Thus, saying everything that comes to mind, we will achieve that at some way or at some point something of that unconscious content comes out and will be the task of the psychoanalyst to hold from there and redirect that material to the initial initial origin origin.

Psychoanalysis books

To continue learning and deepening psychoanalysis, the following bibliography is recommended:

• Psychoanalysis for beginners (2002) by Iván Ward and Oscar Zarate.
• The interpretation of dreams (1899) by Sigmund Freud.
• Introduction to psychoanalysis (1917) by Sigmund Freud.
• Psychopathology of everyday life (1901) Sigmund Freud.
• The triumph of religion of Jacques Lacan.
• The seminar by Jacques Lacan (1994).

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