Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Theory (Part 1)

Psychoanalysis

Term has two meanings: Theory of personality Method of therapy

Both emphasize unconscious conflicts in mental life Typically shaped by childhood

experiences

Early Years

Born in 1856 in the small Austro-Hungarian town of Freiberg

Attended medical school at the University of Vienna No real interest in the practice of medicine Started a career in laboratory research

Left Vienna and went to study with Jean-Martin Charcot in Paris (between 1885-1886)

Demonstration of hysteria

Studies in Hysteria (1895)

Collaborated with Joseph Breuer (1842-1925) on an investigation into hypnosis and hysteria

Freud sees hysteria as unitary disease with a single cause Searched for the “source of the Nile.”

Argued that hysterics fell ill because of repressed trauma Experience is relived under hypnosis.

Seduction hypothesis

Freud claimed that childhood sexuality was at the root of neuroses

Believed that a single traumatic event was at the heart of hysteria All were seduced during childhood

Eventually gave up the seduction theory and saw the reported events as fantasies

Unconscious

Freud believed that much of our mental life is beyond our reach

The Unconscious (1915) –mind is a space in which ideas move between consciousness and unconsciousness

Major Contributions

Unconscious Freud gave us a much better attitude

towards people who were mentally ill (bad early experiences can stick with us)

We are all in conflict – human condition