What is Psychoanalysis – An Introduction
USD 26,99
Format: 13.5x21.5
Number of Pages: 144
ISBN: 978-3-99130-608-5
Release Date: 29.03.2024
An introduction to psychoanalysis written for the curious layperson: From Freud to subsequent developments. This book delves into elements of psychoanalytic theory and practice, supplemented with comprehensive examples of mental disorders and their therapies.
Preface
Since its discovery, psychoanalysis has been one of the influential intellectual forces of the 20th century, with a profound impact on the humanities and social sciences. Many of its concepts and terms have become part of the general vocabulary, albeit often in an unfortunately diluted or distorted form.
Very frequently, psychoanalysis has been and still is the subject of contentious social and scientific debate. This certainly has to do with the unpleasant truths or hypotheses with which psychoanalysis confronts people.
In addition to the many scientific articles and books published for a professional audience, there is also an extensive library of popular science literature aimed at the curious layperson. These include a wide range of pieces that deal more or less critically with Sigmund Freud. In many cases, the aim is to make a “critical assessment” of the founder as a person, rather than psychoanalysis itself.
This book was also written primarily for the curious layman. Although psychoanalysis, like every other science, has certainly evolved since Sigmund Freud’s findings, the public generally still equates psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud’s discoveries. In particular, the work of Melanie Klein, perhaps the most important psychoanalyst after Freud, has remained relatively unknown.
This introduction to psychoanalysis will therefore limit itself to the presentation of this line from Freud to Freud’s successors (Brenner 1981; Sandler 1987; Sandler and Sandler 1999) and with consideration of Melanie Klein’s findings (Caper 2000; Frank and Weiss 2002; Segal 1994). In principle, this also corresponds to the main line of psychoanalysis, although it should not go unmentioned that psychoanalysis has differentiated itself on its scientific front, like theoretical physics, into a number of sometimes quite different directions.
Note on genders
For reasons of better readability, no gender-neutral differentiation is used in this book. Corresponding formulations or representations apply in principle to all genders in the interests of equal treatment. The condensed form does not imply any value judgment.
1 Introduction
Psychoanalysis is a scientific discipline that was founded at the end of the 19th century by the Viennese neurologist Sigmund Freud and remains inextricably linked with his name today.
Freud conceptualized psychoanalysis, first as a method for investigating psychic processes that are otherwise difficult to access; second, as a treatment method for mental disorders; and third, as a set of theories concerning the structure, development, and functioning of the human psyche (Freud, 1940).
At the core of psychoanalytical theories lies the idea of the unconscious psychic functioning of both normal and less normal psychic processes. In simplified terms, psychoanalysis can also be understood as the science of the unconscious.
Psychoanalysis is therefore not a philosophical school, but rather an empirical approach to the mind by means of a specific clinical method.
It possesses its own investigative method, a nuanced personality and developmental psychology, a derived pathology, and a comprehensive treatment approach.
The goal of a psychoanalytical investigation is therefore to understand the primarily unconscious significance of actions, thoughts, fantasies, feelings, dreams, parapraxis, delusions, and artistic as well as scientific achievements.
In this sense, psychoanalysis represents a specific form of the perpetual search for truth, as Freud once put it. Consequently, it possesses a disturbing, uncomfortable and even anxiety-provoking element when confronting people with their individual and collective self-deceptions, illusions, perceptual disorders, depths and shallows.
2 The Unconscious
As outlined in the introduction, all cognitive processes, including feelings, ideas, thoughts, desires, memories, perceptions, dreams, and fantasies, take place not only on a conscious level, but also, and even predominantly, on an unconscious level.
A frequently used analogy is that of an iceberg, where only about 15% is visible above the water’s surface, and about 85% lies beneath, in the depth of the ocean where it is invisible to sailors.
But even if the existence of unconscious cognitive processes is no longer disputed today and the terms “the unconscious” or “unconscious” have become firmly established in the common vernacular, their everyday use shows that the popular and colloquial concept of the unconscious is still far removed from its psychoanalytical meaning.
For psychoanalysis, the unconscious refers to feelings (i.e., love, anxiety, hate, envy, etc.) that can be experienced unconsciously without the individual being aware of them on the conscious level. This also means that desires, thoughts, and fantasies exist in the unconscious, unknown to consciousness, and their becoming conscious is often unconsciously prevented.
This implies that only a part of the content of the human unconscious can be directly or consciously grasped, for example, with the help of psychoanalysis. Furthermore, the vast majority of this content can only be accessed with the help of psychoanalysis, and even then, there are limits.
But even if the unconscious is, in this sense, closed to conscious experience, it affects it nonetheless. This means that, much like in the physical environment surrounding us, nothing happens in the psyche by chance or at random. Every human action, thought and feeling is determined by the person’s current conscious and also, sometimes predominantly, unconscious mental state. Of course, the current state is always influenced by past states, structures, and experiences. Thus, if events in the psychic life appear to be coincidental and unconnected, that is only an outward appearance.
Most of us have experienced the power of the unconscious as inexplicable fear, depression, self-doubt, indecision, irrational guilt, and psychic symptoms or lapses (forgetting, promising, etc.).
Another significant insight of psychoanalysis is that unconscious desires and fantasies can be in conflict, that, for example, one person can not only be loved, but also hated, and while love is conscious, hatred may remain unconscious, or vice versa. Conflicts of this nature, such as between love and hate, can have profound implications and may even lead to mental disorders. According to psychoanalysis, the human psyche, with its complexes and complicated unconscious and conscious desires and feelings, is more often in conflict than not. From the psychoanalytic perspective, human life implies a series of conflicts to be resolved.
3 The Drives
Drives are generalizations or theoretical constructs that result from research into human desires.
Drives originate in the unconscious and are active from the beginning of life. The extent to which drives have a biological basis, or how comprehensive this biological basis is, is still the subject of controversy. Freud himself revised his drive theory several times in the course of his professional career. Once a drive is active, the (motor) reaction that would lead to its satisfaction is not predetermined. This distinguishes drive from instinct, the innate need to react to a group of stimuli in a stereotypical or consistent way. A drive can be triggered by an inner and/or external stimulus. The activation of a drive results in an unpleasant sensation, while the satisfaction of the drive is associated with a pleasurable sensation.
The fact that the satisfaction of a drive is associated with a pleasurable sensation leads to a reinforcement of the drive itself, which manifests itself in the form of an urgent desire to repeat this satisfying experience. The specific situation or circumstance is a major factor in the experience, because concrete experiences of satisfaction result in concrete desires, which represent the underlying drives in the unconscious.
Psychoanalytic experience has shown that these instinctual desires can be divided into two categories.
One category is that of erotic desires. Freud called the corresponding drive from which these desires arise the life drive or the associated psychic force, known as the libido. Erotic desires are very strongly connected to the so-called erogenous zones and can also be activated by these. The erogenous zones naturally include the genitals, anus, mouth and skin, but also the sensory organs such as the eyes, ears and olfactory organs. It is common knowledge that touching, seeing and smelling can be sexually stimulating. For psychoanalysis, the term “sexual” essentially encompasses the same experiences that are colloquially referred to as sensual. In other words, psychoanalysis understands sexuality or eroticism as something much more comprehensive than is usually thought. More on this later.
The other category comprises aggressive desires, i.e., desires for destruction and annihilation. As these desires can also be directed against the self, Freud called the underlying drive the death drive.
However, while Sigmund Freud also attempted to explain the death drive in biological terms, Melanie Klein refrained from doing so, believing that the conflict between the life and death drives could be formulated in purely psychological terms. In her opinion, the death drive is entirely rooted in the urge to eradicate all needs (for warmth, being held, satiation) or the perception of these needs. Or, since all pain is rooted in the need to live, to destroy life itself.
However, it should not be forgotten that the death drive not only acts inwardly, but also outwardly in a diverted form as an aggressive drive. And the form of the death drive that is directed outwards can in turn serve two different purposes. One, already mentioned, is destruction and annihilation, but the second is defense and ultimately the preservation of life, especially when combined with the life drive.
The life drive and death drive can actually mix, merge, and separate again. The act of eating, for example, represents such a mixture for Freud, because what is eaten with pleasure must be destroyed to do so. For Freud, this counter- and interaction of the two basic drives results in the whole colorful pallet of life’s phenomena. The counteracting describes the conflict of the two basic drives. In simple terms, hate and love are incidentally the two central offshoots of these basic drives, which can remain completely unconscious.
But, although the drives and the resulting concrete desires are central motivators for the human psyche, it should be noted that these are not the sole motivators (see Chapter 5.2).
4 The Development of the Inner World
4.1 Unconscious Fantasies
From birth, humans live in two worlds – an outer, real world and an inner world, a world of fantasy, which is predominantly deeply unconscious, especially in the beginning.
While the outer world is more or less found to be a certain way, the inner world develops as a result of unconscious fantasies accompanying the internal and external stimuli to which the infant is exposed from the very beginning.
Among the internal stimuli are, of course, the drives. The psychic expression of drives are unconscious fantasies, that is, ideas charged with feelings. For example, the painful sensation of hunger can be answered with the idea (fantasy) that there is someone who will eliminate the hunger.
Further, the infant who makes contented sucking noises or sucks his fingers is perhaps expressing the unconscious fantasy of actually being breastfed and owning the object that is breastfeeding him. Since drives are active from birth, unconscious fantasies can also be assumed from birth, although these early fantasies are experienced as somatic rather than psychic sensations.
However, it is not only the drives that trigger unconscious fantasies, but all inner experiences and feelings (emotions), such as anxieties and, of course, the experiences that arise from relationships with parents, siblings, etc. (environment).
Even fantasies can, in turn trigger fantasies, e.g., in the service of fending off the impositions of an inner or outer reality. While early fantasies are not yet fully structured in sensory terms and are rather diffuse, increasingly complex and differentiated fantasies are formed in the course of development, which can eventually be expressed in language and can also penetrate the consciousness, for example, through artistic activities. Note, however, that these later fantasies do not replace the earlier ones but only overlay them; they can be reactivated at any time, for instance, during periods of intense anxiety.
With respect to the previously introduced concept of the unconscious, one could say that the entire psychic content of the unconscious is made up of unconscious fantasies. There is no impulse, no instinctive need that is not experienced as an unconscious fantasy. In other words, the content of all currently prevailing needs or feelings (wishes, fears, anxieties, triumphs, feelings of love, etc.) is expressed through unconscious fantasies.
Unconscious fantasies are in constant interaction with the environment (reality). This means that while the currently dominant unconscious fantasies, i.e., the current acute state of the inner world, more or less unconsciously influence the perception of the outer world (a person in love, for example, perceives the world differently than a person who is grieving). Real experience naturally also influences the unconscious fantasy. A child who is perhaps very angry or full of hatred due to its internal state will have its unconscious fantasy modified differently by a supportive environment than by an environment that is itself full of hatred.
In infancy and early childhood the environment has a particularly lasting effect. However, this does not mean that in the absence of a bad environment, there would be no aggressive or persecutory fears and fantasies.
Unconscious fantasies, especially those of infancy and early childhood, are often experienced not only as real but also as all-powerful. For instance, animosity towards a brother or sister could, in the event that something was to happen to that brother or sister, be experienced psychologically as if the animosity had caused the misfortune. This can then lead to intense feelings of guilt.
This leads to the necessary, lifelong task of learning to distinguish between fantasy and reality, one of the ultimate goals of any psychoanalytic therapy. In the best sense, unconscious fantasies represent hypotheses that can be tested with the help of reality.
It is worth noting that unconscious fantasies almost always take the form of a relationship with an object (a significant other). That is, the experience of fear, for example, is always fantasized as a threat from an object, in whatever more or less rudimentary form. A fantasy representing a sexual desire will not only contain a type of desire towards an object, but also the desired reaction of the object.
4.2 Splitting, Introjection, Projection
Among the manifold unconscious fantasies formed during the development of the individual’s inner world, three should be emphasized as playing a major role, especially in the early stages of life. First, however, it is worth introducing the distinction between a mechanism and a fantasy.
Mechanisms are abstractions of concrete fantasies and, as such, are not part of the experiential realm. Mechanisms generally serve to defend against disturbances of the mental balance and are therefore usually referred to as defense mechanisms. One of the most popularly known defense mechanisms is known as repression.
In contrast to abstract mechanisms, fantasies are in a concrete form, i.e., that of specific content, and thus belong to the tangible psychic realm. For example, the unconscious defense mechanism of repression could be concretized by the unconscious fantasy of a dam.
So, when we talk about fantasy types as above, we are actually referring to correlating abstractions, i.e., mechanisms. The three mechanisms that play a major role, especially in the first phase of life, are splitting, introjection and projection.
…
Since its discovery, psychoanalysis has been one of the influential intellectual forces of the 20th century, with a profound impact on the humanities and social sciences. Many of its concepts and terms have become part of the general vocabulary, albeit often in an unfortunately diluted or distorted form.
Very frequently, psychoanalysis has been and still is the subject of contentious social and scientific debate. This certainly has to do with the unpleasant truths or hypotheses with which psychoanalysis confronts people.
In addition to the many scientific articles and books published for a professional audience, there is also an extensive library of popular science literature aimed at the curious layperson. These include a wide range of pieces that deal more or less critically with Sigmund Freud. In many cases, the aim is to make a “critical assessment” of the founder as a person, rather than psychoanalysis itself.
This book was also written primarily for the curious layman. Although psychoanalysis, like every other science, has certainly evolved since Sigmund Freud’s findings, the public generally still equates psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud’s discoveries. In particular, the work of Melanie Klein, perhaps the most important psychoanalyst after Freud, has remained relatively unknown.
This introduction to psychoanalysis will therefore limit itself to the presentation of this line from Freud to Freud’s successors (Brenner 1981; Sandler 1987; Sandler and Sandler 1999) and with consideration of Melanie Klein’s findings (Caper 2000; Frank and Weiss 2002; Segal 1994). In principle, this also corresponds to the main line of psychoanalysis, although it should not go unmentioned that psychoanalysis has differentiated itself on its scientific front, like theoretical physics, into a number of sometimes quite different directions.
Note on genders
For reasons of better readability, no gender-neutral differentiation is used in this book. Corresponding formulations or representations apply in principle to all genders in the interests of equal treatment. The condensed form does not imply any value judgment.
1 Introduction
Psychoanalysis is a scientific discipline that was founded at the end of the 19th century by the Viennese neurologist Sigmund Freud and remains inextricably linked with his name today.
Freud conceptualized psychoanalysis, first as a method for investigating psychic processes that are otherwise difficult to access; second, as a treatment method for mental disorders; and third, as a set of theories concerning the structure, development, and functioning of the human psyche (Freud, 1940).
At the core of psychoanalytical theories lies the idea of the unconscious psychic functioning of both normal and less normal psychic processes. In simplified terms, psychoanalysis can also be understood as the science of the unconscious.
Psychoanalysis is therefore not a philosophical school, but rather an empirical approach to the mind by means of a specific clinical method.
It possesses its own investigative method, a nuanced personality and developmental psychology, a derived pathology, and a comprehensive treatment approach.
The goal of a psychoanalytical investigation is therefore to understand the primarily unconscious significance of actions, thoughts, fantasies, feelings, dreams, parapraxis, delusions, and artistic as well as scientific achievements.
In this sense, psychoanalysis represents a specific form of the perpetual search for truth, as Freud once put it. Consequently, it possesses a disturbing, uncomfortable and even anxiety-provoking element when confronting people with their individual and collective self-deceptions, illusions, perceptual disorders, depths and shallows.
2 The Unconscious
As outlined in the introduction, all cognitive processes, including feelings, ideas, thoughts, desires, memories, perceptions, dreams, and fantasies, take place not only on a conscious level, but also, and even predominantly, on an unconscious level.
A frequently used analogy is that of an iceberg, where only about 15% is visible above the water’s surface, and about 85% lies beneath, in the depth of the ocean where it is invisible to sailors.
But even if the existence of unconscious cognitive processes is no longer disputed today and the terms “the unconscious” or “unconscious” have become firmly established in the common vernacular, their everyday use shows that the popular and colloquial concept of the unconscious is still far removed from its psychoanalytical meaning.
For psychoanalysis, the unconscious refers to feelings (i.e., love, anxiety, hate, envy, etc.) that can be experienced unconsciously without the individual being aware of them on the conscious level. This also means that desires, thoughts, and fantasies exist in the unconscious, unknown to consciousness, and their becoming conscious is often unconsciously prevented.
This implies that only a part of the content of the human unconscious can be directly or consciously grasped, for example, with the help of psychoanalysis. Furthermore, the vast majority of this content can only be accessed with the help of psychoanalysis, and even then, there are limits.
But even if the unconscious is, in this sense, closed to conscious experience, it affects it nonetheless. This means that, much like in the physical environment surrounding us, nothing happens in the psyche by chance or at random. Every human action, thought and feeling is determined by the person’s current conscious and also, sometimes predominantly, unconscious mental state. Of course, the current state is always influenced by past states, structures, and experiences. Thus, if events in the psychic life appear to be coincidental and unconnected, that is only an outward appearance.
Most of us have experienced the power of the unconscious as inexplicable fear, depression, self-doubt, indecision, irrational guilt, and psychic symptoms or lapses (forgetting, promising, etc.).
Another significant insight of psychoanalysis is that unconscious desires and fantasies can be in conflict, that, for example, one person can not only be loved, but also hated, and while love is conscious, hatred may remain unconscious, or vice versa. Conflicts of this nature, such as between love and hate, can have profound implications and may even lead to mental disorders. According to psychoanalysis, the human psyche, with its complexes and complicated unconscious and conscious desires and feelings, is more often in conflict than not. From the psychoanalytic perspective, human life implies a series of conflicts to be resolved.
3 The Drives
Drives are generalizations or theoretical constructs that result from research into human desires.
Drives originate in the unconscious and are active from the beginning of life. The extent to which drives have a biological basis, or how comprehensive this biological basis is, is still the subject of controversy. Freud himself revised his drive theory several times in the course of his professional career. Once a drive is active, the (motor) reaction that would lead to its satisfaction is not predetermined. This distinguishes drive from instinct, the innate need to react to a group of stimuli in a stereotypical or consistent way. A drive can be triggered by an inner and/or external stimulus. The activation of a drive results in an unpleasant sensation, while the satisfaction of the drive is associated with a pleasurable sensation.
The fact that the satisfaction of a drive is associated with a pleasurable sensation leads to a reinforcement of the drive itself, which manifests itself in the form of an urgent desire to repeat this satisfying experience. The specific situation or circumstance is a major factor in the experience, because concrete experiences of satisfaction result in concrete desires, which represent the underlying drives in the unconscious.
Psychoanalytic experience has shown that these instinctual desires can be divided into two categories.
One category is that of erotic desires. Freud called the corresponding drive from which these desires arise the life drive or the associated psychic force, known as the libido. Erotic desires are very strongly connected to the so-called erogenous zones and can also be activated by these. The erogenous zones naturally include the genitals, anus, mouth and skin, but also the sensory organs such as the eyes, ears and olfactory organs. It is common knowledge that touching, seeing and smelling can be sexually stimulating. For psychoanalysis, the term “sexual” essentially encompasses the same experiences that are colloquially referred to as sensual. In other words, psychoanalysis understands sexuality or eroticism as something much more comprehensive than is usually thought. More on this later.
The other category comprises aggressive desires, i.e., desires for destruction and annihilation. As these desires can also be directed against the self, Freud called the underlying drive the death drive.
However, while Sigmund Freud also attempted to explain the death drive in biological terms, Melanie Klein refrained from doing so, believing that the conflict between the life and death drives could be formulated in purely psychological terms. In her opinion, the death drive is entirely rooted in the urge to eradicate all needs (for warmth, being held, satiation) or the perception of these needs. Or, since all pain is rooted in the need to live, to destroy life itself.
However, it should not be forgotten that the death drive not only acts inwardly, but also outwardly in a diverted form as an aggressive drive. And the form of the death drive that is directed outwards can in turn serve two different purposes. One, already mentioned, is destruction and annihilation, but the second is defense and ultimately the preservation of life, especially when combined with the life drive.
The life drive and death drive can actually mix, merge, and separate again. The act of eating, for example, represents such a mixture for Freud, because what is eaten with pleasure must be destroyed to do so. For Freud, this counter- and interaction of the two basic drives results in the whole colorful pallet of life’s phenomena. The counteracting describes the conflict of the two basic drives. In simple terms, hate and love are incidentally the two central offshoots of these basic drives, which can remain completely unconscious.
But, although the drives and the resulting concrete desires are central motivators for the human psyche, it should be noted that these are not the sole motivators (see Chapter 5.2).
4 The Development of the Inner World
4.1 Unconscious Fantasies
From birth, humans live in two worlds – an outer, real world and an inner world, a world of fantasy, which is predominantly deeply unconscious, especially in the beginning.
While the outer world is more or less found to be a certain way, the inner world develops as a result of unconscious fantasies accompanying the internal and external stimuli to which the infant is exposed from the very beginning.
Among the internal stimuli are, of course, the drives. The psychic expression of drives are unconscious fantasies, that is, ideas charged with feelings. For example, the painful sensation of hunger can be answered with the idea (fantasy) that there is someone who will eliminate the hunger.
Further, the infant who makes contented sucking noises or sucks his fingers is perhaps expressing the unconscious fantasy of actually being breastfed and owning the object that is breastfeeding him. Since drives are active from birth, unconscious fantasies can also be assumed from birth, although these early fantasies are experienced as somatic rather than psychic sensations.
However, it is not only the drives that trigger unconscious fantasies, but all inner experiences and feelings (emotions), such as anxieties and, of course, the experiences that arise from relationships with parents, siblings, etc. (environment).
Even fantasies can, in turn trigger fantasies, e.g., in the service of fending off the impositions of an inner or outer reality. While early fantasies are not yet fully structured in sensory terms and are rather diffuse, increasingly complex and differentiated fantasies are formed in the course of development, which can eventually be expressed in language and can also penetrate the consciousness, for example, through artistic activities. Note, however, that these later fantasies do not replace the earlier ones but only overlay them; they can be reactivated at any time, for instance, during periods of intense anxiety.
With respect to the previously introduced concept of the unconscious, one could say that the entire psychic content of the unconscious is made up of unconscious fantasies. There is no impulse, no instinctive need that is not experienced as an unconscious fantasy. In other words, the content of all currently prevailing needs or feelings (wishes, fears, anxieties, triumphs, feelings of love, etc.) is expressed through unconscious fantasies.
Unconscious fantasies are in constant interaction with the environment (reality). This means that while the currently dominant unconscious fantasies, i.e., the current acute state of the inner world, more or less unconsciously influence the perception of the outer world (a person in love, for example, perceives the world differently than a person who is grieving). Real experience naturally also influences the unconscious fantasy. A child who is perhaps very angry or full of hatred due to its internal state will have its unconscious fantasy modified differently by a supportive environment than by an environment that is itself full of hatred.
In infancy and early childhood the environment has a particularly lasting effect. However, this does not mean that in the absence of a bad environment, there would be no aggressive or persecutory fears and fantasies.
Unconscious fantasies, especially those of infancy and early childhood, are often experienced not only as real but also as all-powerful. For instance, animosity towards a brother or sister could, in the event that something was to happen to that brother or sister, be experienced psychologically as if the animosity had caused the misfortune. This can then lead to intense feelings of guilt.
This leads to the necessary, lifelong task of learning to distinguish between fantasy and reality, one of the ultimate goals of any psychoanalytic therapy. In the best sense, unconscious fantasies represent hypotheses that can be tested with the help of reality.
It is worth noting that unconscious fantasies almost always take the form of a relationship with an object (a significant other). That is, the experience of fear, for example, is always fantasized as a threat from an object, in whatever more or less rudimentary form. A fantasy representing a sexual desire will not only contain a type of desire towards an object, but also the desired reaction of the object.
4.2 Splitting, Introjection, Projection
Among the manifold unconscious fantasies formed during the development of the individual’s inner world, three should be emphasized as playing a major role, especially in the early stages of life. First, however, it is worth introducing the distinction between a mechanism and a fantasy.
Mechanisms are abstractions of concrete fantasies and, as such, are not part of the experiential realm. Mechanisms generally serve to defend against disturbances of the mental balance and are therefore usually referred to as defense mechanisms. One of the most popularly known defense mechanisms is known as repression.
In contrast to abstract mechanisms, fantasies are in a concrete form, i.e., that of specific content, and thus belong to the tangible psychic realm. For example, the unconscious defense mechanism of repression could be concretized by the unconscious fantasy of a dam.
So, when we talk about fantasy types as above, we are actually referring to correlating abstractions, i.e., mechanisms. The three mechanisms that play a major role, especially in the first phase of life, are splitting, introjection and projection.
…
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