Psychoanalytic+and+Psychodynamic+Psychology



**Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic psychology**  focuses on how thoughts and feelings can affect behavior. Psychoanalysts believe that there are mental processes and feelings in a person’s unconscious. These are outside our natural awareness and eventually the unconscious mental processes build up to a point where they are released into a person’s actions, thoughts and feelings. Overall, psychoanalysis derives on the idea that behavior is driven by a collection of mental processes, conscious and unconscious.

Psychoanalysis/Psychodynamic deals often with the personal study of abnormal behavior. It is thought that abnormal behaviors can be explained by unconscious mental processes and if the unconscious meaning behind the behavior can be discovered then the individual and learn how to control the behavior.

This specialty also focuses on unconscious aggressive and unconscious sexual urges and how they affect or explain behavior. The emphasis on childhood is quite strong as it often helps explain behaviors later in life. Personality development is also a topic covered in this area as personality plays a major role in affecting our behaviors as well as how these unconscious processes can affect our personality.

Since psychoanalysis research is conducted mainly through individual case studies, the focus of research questions are always specific to the individual. Every person has different conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings and will react differently to them. Therefore, there is not a general set of questions that are asked during research, but there are common themes.

For example, for someone who has obsessive compulsive disorder and constantly washes their hands, a psychoanalyst would ask about what happened in that individual’s past that may lead them to this behavior. By learning about a person’s past, present behaviors can often be explained. The reason a person may excessively wash their hand is to get rid of the dirt, but “dirt” can come to represent some unconscious urge or fear that is not surfacing in a behavior.

It is this field that has developed the technique of psychotherapy. This therapy focuses on the individual gaining insight so unconscious impulses are brought into awareness and then will disappear. So in order to gain insight the therapist often asks personal questions about certain memories and feelings at a certain point in time and how they feel about that. They often discuss dreams, and use the technique of free association where a patient is asked to say the first thing that comes to mind. These are ways of simply talking out the conscious fears, conflicts and feelings, with the intent of having the unconscious become revealed as well.

**History**  The founder of Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic psychology was a Viennese physician named Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Freud specialized in neurology and was studying the relationship between the brain and the nervous system when he developed a theory of the role that our thoughts and feelings play in our actions. Freud believed that the mind was not one unit but made up of multiple parts, one of which includes unconscious mental processes. Freud believed that people have sexual and aggressive urges which we “ban” on a conscious level and therefore suppress them to our unconscious. Therefore, we are continually experiencing a push and pull interaction between our conscious and unconscious.

It is from Freud that many concepts and ideas of modern day psychodynamic theory stemmed from. From this specialty two types of therapy have resulted both with the origin of Freud’s beliefs. Psychoanalysis therapy derives from Freud’s theory of personality and focuses on patients talking out their problems in hopes of understanding their motivations for behavior through insight. This is where the vision on a patient laying the couch speaking to a therapist originated from. Psychodynamic therapy also came from Freud and psychoanalysis, as it is just a less intense form with less focus on sexual and aggressive drives in explaining behaviors.

Freud is also credited with a theory of personality which consists of three parts the id, ego and super ego. Each represents a different part of a personality that describes personal desires, right and wrong, and balancing the two. Furthermore, Freud also created a theory of psychosexual stages which describes development in the sexual feelings and desires that are present at certain ages.

From Freud’s original foundations, this specialty has grown and branched out to other psychologists and topics. The most developed and focused upon by his followers has been personality and its development (//The Interpretation of Dreams//, 1899; //The Ego and the Id//,1923).

Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, agreed with Freud’s personality and added the concept of a collective unconscious which houses unconscious ideas and memories common to all people (//Psychology of Unconscious//, 1912; //Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology//, 1917).

Freud’s other most notable follower was Alfred Adler who believed that inferiority and helplessness were just as important as aggressive and sexual impulses in forming personality (//The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology//, 1927).

American Psychoanalytic Association. About Psychoanalysis. Retrieved February 8, 2010 from http://www.apsa.org/About_Psychoanalysis.aspx

Kosslyn, S. M., & Rosenberg, R. S. (2004). //Psychology: The Brain, The Person, The World// (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Publishing.