Basic Concepts And Provisions Of The Classical Psychoanalysis Of Freud

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Starting from the scientific and biological understanding of man, Freud based his theory on the concept of attraction, which he understood as a phenomenon located on the border of the physiological and mental. More precisely, in classical psychoanalysis, attraction is understood as the mental idea of stimuli constantly emanating from within the body, causing internal tension, which requires relaxation, which is perceived by the psyche as pleasure.

Hunger, thirst, sleepiness, sex drive, pain avoidance etc. can be examples of drives.

Freud considered it unnecessary to classify them carefully and divided them, on the one hand, into sexual drives and drives "I", and on the other, into the drive for life (Eros) and the drive for death (he is sometimes called Thanatos, although Freud himself never did not use).

By drives "I" Freud meant what today we are more accustomed to call "the desire for self-preservation." Contrary to the intuitive clarity of the term "sexuality", Freud gives it a fairly broad and specific meaning. In fact, sexuality in psychoanalysis means any desire for bodily pleasure that occurs in a person from birth and is present throughout his life until his death. Thus, the child, from infancy to the very period of puberty, is already a sexual being.

However, childish (infantile) sexuality, due to the peculiarities of the psychological tasks of the corresponding stages of child development and physiological immaturity, differs significantly from adult sexuality. At various stages of development, it is dominated by other ways of gratifying drives. Sexual attraction is always directed towards an object, which can also be a part of one's own body.

The first sexual objects of a child, in addition to his own body, are his parents, or their substitutes. Depending on how these adults treat the child, he may feel that either his instincts are generally satisfied, or not satisfied, or overly satisfied.

In a state of dissatisfaction, the child experiences anxiety, which he, however, can learn to cope with thanks, for example, to the fact that an image of parents gradually appears in his psyche, who in one way or another will appear and satisfy his need. Each stage of child development has its own characteristic model of overcoming anxiety. If this anxiety was excessive, or even traumatic, fixation occurs at the appropriate stage, i.e. in the future, such a child, and then an adult, will use the model characteristic of this childhood stage of development to overcome his anxiety.

In turn, early sexual desires at a certain moment become unacceptable for consciousness, but since nothing dies in mental life, they do not disappear without a trace, but are "repressed", that is, become inaccessible to consciousness, unconscious. The unconscious, on the other hand, functions according to the principle of pleasure, which it seeks to achieve completely and immediately, therefore such unconscious desires constantly strive to penetrate into consciousness and find their satisfaction.

However, consciousness resists such penetration, since it fulfills the task of adjusting desires to the requirements of reality, as well as disparate conscious and unconscious desires among themselves. And unconscious desires have to make their way out in a roundabout way, finding themselves a surrogate, symbolic satisfaction. And since such an unconscious desire still remains unsatisfied, it comes back again and again in the form of a symptom, with which the client turns to the psychoanalyst.

The task of the psychoanalyst is to "decipher" the unconscious desire behind the symptom and bring it to the consciousness of the client, who will thus be able to keep it under conscious control. Classical psychoanalysis assumes that with the help of a symptom, unconscious desire, having no access to speech, tries to express itself, as it were.

Once expressed, it is no longer necessary for him to return to consciousness in the form of a symptom. In addition, in the course of realizing what was previously repressed into the unconscious, the pathological model that organized the client's life is destroyed. The fact is that in the human psyche the principle of superdeminism dominates, i.e. individual mental phenomena are predetermined by many other phenomena that are in a very close relationship. And even when a person makes the most, that neither is, a conscious and rationally grounded decision, the share of unconscious tendencies in him still significantly prevails over the share of consciousness. And the essence of such unconscious participation is predetermined by the model through which the unconscious desires of such a person are realized in symbolic form and how his consciousness is protected from them. Such models and forms of protection are called "mental defense mechanisms".

The most important achievement of classical psychoanalysis is the discovery of the client's intrapsychic reality, which may not coincide with his actual reality. Trying to break into consciousness, unconscious tendencies can greatly distort a person's memories and ideas.

For example, as a child, a client might receive one single slap in the face from his father, but it could be so painful to him that he would confidently tell the analyst that his father was very harsh and punished him cruelly. However, not only sexual desires can become unconscious, but also aggressive desires directed towards oneself or others.

Freud believed that a person has a death drive, which is the basis of aggression. After all, the state of complete absence of all internal tensions is possible only after death.