3.3 FREUD’S CONTRIBUTION :

Psychoanalysis became a scientific theory after Sigmund freud. Even though there had been conceptualization in the west about the individual mind and its variations it is after freud it was systematically explored. Freud was in Vienna as a while he was treating patients with hysterical symptoms. Hysterical symptoms like paralysis, seizures,blindness deafness,pain syndromes, memory loss,possession, fugue states..etc were observed by him and were successfully treated with hypnosis .It was a common knowledge that these patients did not have any organic basis for their syndromes. Women and children were seen to have more affected by hysterical symptoms. Young women who had hysteria had more vivid childhood sexual trauma to tell in frued’s early clinical practice  and he felt by allowing them to narrate their events of trauma often relieved their symptoms.

 Freud's first theory to explain hysterical symptoms was presented in Studies on Hysteria (1895), co-authored with his mentor the distinguished physician Josef Breuer, which was generally seen as the birth of psychoanalysis. Freud contended that at the root of hysterical symptoms were repressed memories of distressing occurrences, almost always having direct or indirect sexual associations.

by middle of 1890s He contended that unconscious sexual fantasies were uncovered during his process of free association- atechnique in which patients were allowed to talk for long periods and facilitated to describe their secrets.  the process of unconscious memories hidden from normal day to day functions is called repression. he felt they manifest occasionally in dreams and disease states. By uncovering them he could relieve the distress.

Freud concluded by 1900 dreams have symbolic functions and interpreting them would give ideas into the inner world of the individual. He by this time was convinced about an unconscious mind and a conscious mind. The unconscious has a primary process thinking consisting of symbolic and condensed thoughts like the one seen in dreams and a secondary process which consist of logical and conscious process.






 He had modeled a topographical model for the mind based on this theory. over phases like the oral(0-1years) anal(1-3years) phallic ( 3-5years)  latent ( 6years to puberty) and genital( puberty onwards to mature adulthood).

He conceptualized that psychic energy moves either outwards or towards self in a process called cathexis. The self directed cathexis was called as a process leading to narcissism. He felt that anger turned inwards lead to depression. He could describe in this way certain self destructive behaviours of human beings. Similarly when the cathexis happens towards a source of  power, leads to group behaviours and leadership following.  In 1920 he proposed a dual drive theory of “sexuality and aggression” to explain human destructiveness and wars.

By 1923 freud was convinced repression was only one among several defence machanisms. He proposed a structural theory of mind consisting of id,ego and superego. Mental functioning based upon the interaction between the id,ego and superego along with various defence mechanism were the cause of anxiety. He tirelessly explained early infants attachments with mother as oedipal complex and proposed as the cause anxiety and behavioural pattern in later life.

 

the capacities to control oral, sexual, and destructive impulses; to tolerate painful effects without falling apart; and to prevent the eruption into consciousness of bizarre symbolic fantasy. Synthetic functions, in contrast to autonomous functions, arise from the development of the ego and serve the purpose of managing conflictual processes. Defenses are synthetic functions that protect the conscious mind from awareness of forbidden impulses and thoughts. One purpose of ego psychology has been to emphasize that some mental functions can be considered to be basic, rather than derivatives of wishes, affects, or defenses.

There are six "points of view", five described by Freud and a sixth added by Hartmann. Unconscious processes can therefore be evaluated from each of these six points of view. The "points of view" are:

 1. Topographic

2. Dynamic (the theory of conflict)

 3. Economic (the theory of energy flow)

 4. Structural

 5. Genetic (propositions concerning origin and development of psychological functions)

 6. Adaptational (psychological phenomena as it relates to the external world).