PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACH

Psychoanalytic approach to personality

Psychoanalytic approach to personality

Introduction

Psychoanalytic theory began with the research of Sigmund Freud; during the 20th century, psychoanalytic theory evolved into a post-Freudian cacophony of contemporary schools: Classical Freudianism or ego psychology, British object relations, and French psychoanalytic traditions. These dominant orientations, revised by clinical practice, new schools of psychoanalytic thought, contemporary cultural theory, and the pressures of the talking cure, posit universal dilemmas in becoming human.

Psychoanalytic theory can be understood as a means for approaching existential questions of life and death, and aggression and Eros in the work of learning to live. These affective dynamics are the basis of the transference: the exchange of love and authority with desire and knowledge. The transference is the basic mechanism of learning and not learning (Britzman, 2006).

Compare and contrast Psychoanalytic theory of Freud, Adler and Jung

In the field of psychology, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Carl Jung, developed three distinct theories of personality that to this day, continue to be the foundations on which all modern psychological theories are built. All three of these remarkable men knew and worked with each other. When Adler and Jung praised Freud's book on dream interpretation, they were invited to join Freud's circle of peers, who met weekly at his home in Vienna, Austria (Mitchell, 2008). At these meetings, they discussed new and groundbreaking aspects of psychopathology. Freud, Adler, and Jung are unequivocally the most influential figures in modern psychology. Freud's concept of the id, the ego, and the superego, are the underlying factors that began all three schools of thought and that provide the foundations of modern psychology. Freud believed that the id had no contact with reality and worked on the pleasure principle and hedonistic wants, with no morality involved. The ego develops as children experience the demands and constraints of reality. It uses reasoning to make decisions (Gardner, 2010).

The superego is concerned with right and wrong, it is the moral compass, the conscience in each individual. Freud believed that people are unaware of the most eminent personality processes. Like an iceberg, only the small portion of the conscious mind is accessible and above the water. The preconscious, just out of reach, and the subconscious, deeply repressed, is below the water completely. These are most problems with behavior and the personality, according to Freud. Freud also theorized that the personality was formed by early childhood experiences, called psychosexual stages. If a child's basic needs are not being met during one of these stages, the child may become “fixated” or stuck in that stage. For example, if an adult smokes, he or she could be said to be “orally fixated.” According to Freud, infants at the oral stage use their mouths to explore their environment (Britzman, 2006).

Characteristic of Psychoanalytic Theory

Theory of Culture and Religion

Freud described other ways in which the unconscious is revealed in everyday life. For example, what Freud called a parapraxis, known today as a “Freudian slip” or “slip of the tongue,” is popularly understood to describe the occurrence ...