What is Psychoanalysis – An Introduction E-Book

Alfred Rink

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 193

Beschreibung

Since its discovery, psychoanalysis has been one of the defining influences of the 20th century, with a profound impact on the humanities and social sciences. However, in the public eye it is often equated with the insights of its founder, the Viennese neurologist Sigmund Freud. The further evolution of psychoanalysis, particularly through the works of Joseph Sandler and Melanie Klein, remains far less known to the public. This introductory text, tailored for the curious layperson, aims to bridge this knowledge gap. It combines elements of psychoanalytic theory with numerous practical treatment and therapy examples.

Leseprobe

Imprint

All rights of distribution, also through movies, radio and television, photomechanical reproduction, sound carrier, electronic medium and reprinting in excerpts are reserved.

© 2024 novum publishing

ISBN print edition:978-3-99130-608-5

ISBN e-book: 978-3-99130-464-7

Translated from German: Lingual Consultancy

Cover photo: Pop Nukoonrat | Dreamstime.com

Cover design, layout & typesetting: novum publishing

Internal illustrations: Alfred Rink

www.novumpublishing.com

Dedication

For

Lisa-Marie,

Sarah-Sophie,

Eva-Lotta,

Max and

Nele

Acknowledgments

This book is the result of an unfinished learning process. Many people supported and accompanied me throughout the process. I would especially like to thank my psychoanalytic teachers and colleagues. I would like to thank my wife Christiane for her patience and openness, and finally, I would like to thank all my patients for allowing me to learn so much from them.

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 thelife driveor the associated psychic force, known as thelibido. 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 thedeath 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.

Mechanismsare 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,fantasiesare 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.

Splittingdescribes a mental experience in which things that actually belong together are separated or torn apart. Splitting can, for example, lead to individuals in the environment, who have both positive and negative sides, being temporarily or permanently split into only good or only bad individuals. However, splitting not only affects the environment; our own personality can also be unconsciously split into good and corresponding bad parts.

For the infant and toddler, however, splitting is a necessary tool, as they lend the early, conflictual inner world an initial structure in which the “good” experiences are protected from the “bad” experiences. Children often exhibit this tendency in their play, where the world is divided into cops and robbers, cowboys and natives.

Adults, on the other hand, should ideally be less dependent on it. Nonetheless, adults also repeatedly resort to this defense mechanism in the context of internal or external crises. Furthermore, pathological splitting is a fundamental characteristic of any form of terrorism or fanaticism.

No matter how different cases of religious radicalism and political doctrines may be in content, the splitting of the world into good and evil is always present. Ultimately, there is the fantasy that by destroying the corresponding religious, political or national people group onto whom evil or inferiority is projected, a just, ideal and pure world can swiftly be restored.

In general, when people are filled with a deep fear or hatred, they divide the world into good and evil. Everything good is credited to one’s own community; everything contradictory and threatening is hatefully projected onto the foreign or “other.”

This bring us to what is known as projection.Projectionis a mechanism that is based on the fantasy that something is psychologically or physically ejected and assigned to the environment or a person in the environment. A distinction can be made between different levels and objectives. On a higher or more mature level, it is more about getting rid of an unwanted, tormenting quality, such as envy, following the motto: “It’s not me who is envious, it’s him or her.”

On a deeper or more primal level, it is not so much characteristics but parts of the personality that are projected, for highly varied purposes. This type of projection is usually referred to asprojective identification, as it is not simply a matter of getting rid of an unwanted personality trait by projecting it onto someone, but of subtly ensuring that this person also identifies with the projected trait. Projective identification has multiple goals. It can serve to rid oneself of one’s evil sides, and also to control, attack or even destroy the object of the projection in one’s fantasy or imagination.

Fantasized good personality aspects, on the other hand, can be projected to protect them from internal dangers or to avoid the painful feeling of separation. The so-called “good” object is merged with the subject, becoming part of the subject, and there is thus no longer any dependence.

Introjection, on the other hand, is a mechanism based on the fantasy that something is absorbed into the inner world or concretely into one’s own body, where it may take on a life of its own.

Introjection fantasies also have different goals. For example, the fantasy can be that good aspects of the outside world become part of the inner world for the sake of possession, to merge with them or to protect them from imagined threats. Similarly, though perhaps less frequently, the purpose of introjection is to take external dangers into the inner world in order to be able to control them in this way.

The formation and development of the psychic functions of introjection and projection occurs in reference to the initial bodily functions. That is, introjection develops in reference to taking in through the mouth, eyes, and nose, while projection forms in reference to expulsion through the mouth and, especially, the anus.

4.3 Paranoid-Schizoid Position

While it is currently assumed that the differentiation of the human organism into physical and psychic functions occurs even before birth and that the infant therefore has a rudimentary version of the psychic organization called theegofrom birth, the extent to which the infant can differentiate between him- or herself and his or her mother (environment) after birth is still a matter of debate. Both are probably true, i.e., in states of security and contentment, the infant is more likely to experience the mother as inseparable, as part of themselves, whereas in situations of pain and despair, the infant is more likely to experience themselves as separate from her.

In this context, the drives that are active from the start, i.e., the life drive and the death drive, naturally play a significant role.

For just as the infant is exposed to an environment that causes fear (pain, cold, hunger) on the one hand, and a life-giving environment containing love and warmth and parental care on the other, it is also confronted with the innate conflict between the life and death drives, in which the death drive is experienced in the form of unconscious fantasies, of pursuing, threatening objects.

This can result in the infant being exposed to strong mood swings, especially in the first few months. Moments of contentment and well-being, to which the infant reacts with happy gurgling and other signs of satisfaction, are accompanied by fantasies of having merged with a good, wish-fulfilling object (mother). By contrast, during phases of hunger, pain and the associated despair, the infant believes to have lost the good state or the good object forever, or rather, it fantasizes of being at the mercy of a bad object.

As a reaction to this state of despair, the infant splits its inner and outer world into a good and an evil world, according to the quality of the life and death drive. The purpose of the split is to protect the good inner world, i.e., the parts associated with the life drive, from the evil world, which represents the death drive.

As a further protective measure, the infant’s ego will try to project the anxiety-provoking aspects of the inner world into the outer world, where they are fantasized as being fused with the anxiety-provoking part of the outer object.

This way, the anxieties of the death drive develop into fear of being chased or persecuted, and the part of the death drive that remains in the ego is transformed into aggression and directed against the persecutors.

However, a part of the life drive, or the ego part that contains the life drive, is also projected outwards, and this part is fantasized as being fused with the life-giving reality or the corresponding good object (mother). In this way, two fantasy objects are created, which are experienced as part of the external world.

At the same time, however, these external objects are also reincorporated or introjected into the inner world. The good external object is introjected in order to have a good object not only in the outside world, but also within oneself, combined with the fantasy of being protected and cared for by it. But the bad object is also introjected, combined with the fantasy of being able to control it better. This creates an inner world modeled on the outside world, populated with so-called good and badinner objects, or inner parents, who are perceived imaginatively as vivid people inside the body.