Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalytic or psychodynamic psychotherapy is an umbrella term that describes the psychotherapeutic clinical application of a larger group of theories and principles stemming from psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis began as the work of Sigmund Freud and quickly expanded through the work of his contemporaries, including Sandor Ferenczi, Carl Jung, Wilhelm Reich, Otto Rank, and Alfred Adler, just to name a few of his old disciples.

THE DYNAMIC UNCONSCIOUS

Freud (1900, 1905) developed a topographical model of the mind, describing the features of the mind’s structure and function. Freud used the analogy of an iceberg to describe the three levels of the mind. Much of mental life, our activities, both cognitive and emotional, occurs outside of a person’s conscious awareness. Some thoughts may require purposeful attention to bring them to mind. Such thoughts and feelings would arouse anxiety or self-censure if they became conscious. Often organized as fantasies, they continue to exert powerful effects on a person’s behavior, attitudes, and experiences. These fantasies are vestiges of the past that describe wishful relationships of the self to others, especially our parents.

Freud (1915) described the conscious mind, which consists of all the mental processes of which we are aware, and this is seen as the tip of the iceberg. For example, you may be feeling thirsty at this moment and decide to get a drink.

Freud used the analogy of an iceberg to describe the three levels of the mind. On the surface is consciousness, which consists of those thoughts that are the focus of our attention now, and this is seen as the tip of the iceberg.

The preconscious contains thoughts and feelings that a person is not currently aware of, but which can easily be brought to consciousness (1924). It exists just below the level of consciousness, before the unconscious mind.
The preconscious consists of all which can be retrieved from memory. The third and most significant region is the unconscious. Here lie the processes that are the real cause of most of our behaviors. Like an iceberg, the most important part of the mind is the part you cannot see. 

FREE ASSOCIATION

Free association (like our dreams, lapsus, all expressive movements) is the psychoanalytic technique discovered by Sigmund Freud that laid the groundwork for psychoanalytic treatment. Free association is a mental process whereby the patient reveals his thoughts to the analyst without censorship or specific agenda. In normal human discourse an effort is made to provide one’s listener with organized, coherent and goal directed content. By relaxing such efforts, the patient’s discourse follows associative pathways that are linked by unconscious thoughts and emotions rather than conscious reason and logic, demonstrating the principle of psychic determinism. The analyst is able to make inferences about the patient’s unconscious mental life and to make connections that are not otherwise apparent. The patient’s methods of defense as well as wishful impulses are revealed. All patients invariably struggle with the effort to expose intimate sometimes shameful and guilt-ridden aspects of their inner life.

TRANSFERENCE

In 1905 Freud, through his failure with Dora´s case, begins to talk about the concept of transference. With the working with Anna O. began to think that transference is the patient’s constellation of conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings about the psychoanalyst that derive from his earliest relationships with parents.

Specific features of the psychoanalytic situation (frequency of sessions, use of the couch, free association method) are designed to evoke unconscious fantasies from childhood that have organized the intrapsychic relationship of self to important others. These fantasies are reanimated and directed towards the analyst in the here and now and serve to demonstrate to the patient how powerfully the past lives within the present.

While transference is a universal tendency, the patient’s opportunity within a psychoanalytic treatment to understand its sources provides the greatest leverage for therapeutic change. While the dominant influence in the patient’s transference is his intrapsychic life, the analyst’s personality and behavior may influence how the transference emerges. Some analysts regard the transference as accounting for all aspects of the relationship between patient and analyst. Other analysts find it useful to distinguish the transference from the “real relationship” and from the therapeutic alliance. The therapeutic alliance is the patient’s capacity to work cooperatively with the analyst even in the face of a negative transference. J. Lacan held that a soft negative transferences convenient for the best low of the treatment.

Transference is listening to the unconscious

Transference is the door to get out of neurosis

Transference is being able to enter a healthier reality