Psychoanalytic Therapy

KEY CONCEPTS
VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

 Behavior is determined by irrational forces, unconscious

motivation and biological and instinctual drives as these
evolve through key psychosexual stages in the first 6 years
of life.
 Life instincts: serve the purpose of the survival of the
individual and the human race that oriented toward
growth, development and creativity, which included all
pleasurable acts.
 Death instincts: account for the aggressive drive and
manifest though their behavior an unconscious wish to
die or to hurt themselves or others.
STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY

ID EGO SUPEREGO
PLEASURE REALITY MORAL
INBORN EXECUTIVE LEARN FROM
PARENTS &
SOCIETY

UNCONSCIOUS CONSCIOUS
ID
 the primary source of psychic energy
and the seat of the instincts.
 Ruled by pleasure principle
 Aimed at reducing tension, avoiding
pain and gaining pleasure
 Largely unconscious or out of
awareness.
Ego
 The “executive” that governs, controls and
regulates the personality.
 Mediates between the instincts and the
surrounding environment
 Ruled by reality principle
 Does realistic and logical thinking and
formulates plans of action for satisfying
needs.
 Check and control the blind impulse of the id.
Superego
 person’s moral code
 Serve as the judicial branch of personality
 Represent ideal rather than reality
 Strive for perfection but not pleasure
CONSCIOUSNESS AND UNCONSCIOUSNESS

 Keys to understanding behavior and the problems of

personality.
 Unconscious cannot be studied but inferred from
behavior, such as:
3. dreams, which are symbolic representations of
unconscious needs, wishes and conflicts;
4. Slips of tongue and forgetting;
5. Posthypnotic suggestions;
6. Material derived from free-association techniques and
7. Projective techniques
8. The symbolic content of psychotic symptoms.
ANXIETY

1. Reality anxiety is the fear of danger from the

external world, and the level of such anxiety is
proportionate to the degree of real threat.
2. Neurotic anxiety is the fear that the instincts will get
out of hand and cause one to do something for
which one will be punished.
3. Moral anxiety is the fear of one’s own conscience.
 Neurotic and moral anxiety are evoked by threats to
the “balance of power” within the person.
EGO-DEFENSE MECHANISMS

 Help to cope with anxiety and prevent the

ego from being overwhelmed
 characteristics: deny or distort reality
 Operate in unconscious level to reduce
anxiety and lower tension
1. Repression
 Selective exclusion of painful experiences of the
past from conscious awareness
 Freud: “ an involuntary removal of something from
consciousness”
 Most of the painful events of the first 5 years of the
life are so excluded, yet influencing later behavior
2. Denial
 Distortion of reality by pretending that undesirable
or unacceptable events are not really happening
 “Closing one’s eyes”

3. Reaction formation
 To actively express the opposite impulse
 Do not have to face the anxiety by doing so
4. Projection
 self-deception consists of attributing to
others one’s own unacceptable desires
and impulse
5. Displacement
 Rechanneling of energy from one object
to another, especially from a threatening
object to a “safer target
6. Rationalization
 Making good (logical) reasons to explain away
a bruised ego
 Help softening the blow connected with
disappointments
7. Sublimation
 Diverting sexual or aggressive energy into
socially acceptable channels
8. Regression
 The retreat to an earlier stage of development
because of fear

9. Introjection
 Taking in and “swallowing” the values and
standards of others
10. Identification
 Enhances self-worth and protects one from a
sense of being failure

11. Compensation
 Masking perceived weaknesses or developing
certain positive traits to make up for
limitations
 Can have direct adjustive value
 DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY
Comparison of Freud’s Psychosexual Stage and Erikson’s Psychosocial Stage

PERIOD OF
FREUD ERIKSON
LIFE
0~1 Oral Stage Infancy: Trust VS Mistrust
Early Childhood: Autonomy VS
1~3 Anal Stage
Shame and doubt
3~6 Phallic Stage Preschool age: Initiative VS Guilt
6~12 Latency Stage School age: Industry VS Inferiority
Adolescence: Identity VS Role
12~18 Genital Stage
Confusion
Genital Stage Young Adulthood: Intimacy VS
18~35
Continues Isolation
1. Oral stage(0-1)
 Mouth and lips are sensitive erogenous
zones, sucking produces erotic pleasure for
the infant
 Lacking of enough food may lead to
greediness and acquisitiveness
 Fear of reaching out to others, rejection of
affection
 Fear of love and trusting, low self-esteem and
isolation
2. Anal stage(1-3)
 Children find pleasure both in withholding and in
expelling feces
 These pleasures come into conflict with parents
who are attempting toilet training
 The child’s first experience with imposed control
 Anal-aggressive personality
 Anal-retentive personality
3. Phallic stage(3-6)
 Children begin to derive pleasure from fondling
their genitals
 They observe the differences between male
and female
 Begin to direct their sex impulses toward their
parent
 Oedipal complex
 Castration anxiety: boy fears his father will
retaliate by castrating him
 Electra complex
4. Latency stage(6-12)
 New interests replace infantile sexual
impulses
 Socialization take place, major structure of
personality are formed
 Sexual drive is sublimated to some extent to
activities in school, hobbies, sports, and
friendship with members of the same sex
5. Genital stage (12-60+)
 Adolescents develop interest in the opposite
sex
 Engage in some sexual experimentation
 move out of adolescents and into mature
adult responsibilities
 THERAPEUTIC PROCESS
THERAPEUTIC GOALS

 To make unconscious conscious to

strengthen the ego so that behavior is
based more on reality and less on
instinctual cravings or irrational guilt.
 Oriented toward achieving insight, but not
just an intellectual understanding.
THERAPIST’S FUNCTION AND ROLE

 Blank screen approach

 Analysis and interpreting
 Putting the pieces of a puzzle together
CLIENT’S EXPERIENCE IN THERAPY

 Intensive therapeutic process

 Agree to talk
 Not encouraged to make any radical changes in their
lifestyles during the period of analysis
 Achieved success from analytic therapy as an
understanding of their symptoms and the functions
they serve
 An insight into how their environment affects them
and how they affect the environment, and reduced
defensiveness
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THERAPIST AND CLIENT

 transference: the unconscious shifting to the

analyst of feelings and fantasies that are
reactions to significant others in the client’s past
 Countertransference: the reactions therapists
have toward their clients that may interfere with
their objectivity.
it occurs when there is inappropriate affect, when
therapists respond in irrational ways, or when
they lose their objectivity
 It allows clients to understand and resolve their
”unfinished business” from past relationship
TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES

 Maintaining Analytic Framework

 Free Association
 Interpretation
 Dream Analysis
 Analysis and Interpretation of Resistance
 Analysis and Interpretation of Transference
 CONCLUSION

Contributions
 Provide counselors with a conceptual framework for
looking at behavior
 Provide a framework for a dynamic understanding
of the role of early childhood events
 The impact of these experiences on the
contemporary struggles faced by clients
Limitation & Criticism
 Time consume
 Lack of problem solving skill
 Lack of external forces, eg. Society, culture