Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious processes and their influence on conscious thought, emotion and behavior. Based on dream interpretation, psychoanalysis is also a talk therapy method for treating mental disorders. Established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, it takes into account Darwin's theory of evolution, neurology findings, ethnology reports, and, in some respects, the clinical research of his mentor Josef Breuer. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedic article, he identified its four cornerstones: "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex."

Freud's earlier colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Jung soon developed their own methods (individual and analytical psychology); he criticized these concepts, stating that they were not forms of psychoanalysis. After the author's death, neo-Freudian thinkers like Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan created some subfields. Jacques Lacan, whose work is often referred to as Return to Freud, described his metapsychology as a technical elaboration of the three-instance model of the psyche and examined the language-like structure of the unconscious.

Psychoanalysis has been a controversial discipline from the outset. While evidence suggests psychoanalysis, especially long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy, can be effective for certain disorders, its overall efficacy remains contested. Long-term may have benefits over other psychotherapies. Its influence on psychology and psychiatry is undisputed. Psychoanalytic concepts are also widely used outside the therapeutic field, for example in the interpretation of neurological findings, myths and fairy tales, philosophical perspectives such as Freudo-Marxism and in literary criticism.

One of Freud's central arguments is that the contents of the unconscious largely determine cognition and behavior, describing this as the third insult to mankind. While the first is said to consist of the 'cosmic' scandal triggered by Copernicus, the second as biological one by Darwin's realization that man evolved in line of all animals, the narcissistically affected ego now has to cope with the psychological affront that it is not even master of its own house.

Freud found that many of the drives – which his structural model locates in the 'id' – are repressed into the unconscious as a result of traumatic experiences during childhood, so that attempts to integrate them into the conscious perception of the ego triggers resistance. These and other defense mechanisms 'want' to maintain the repression – not least with the means of censorship, internalized fear of punishment or mother-love withdrawal – while the affected instincts resist. All in all, an inner war rages between the id and the ego's conscious values, which manifests itself in more or less conspicuous mental disorders, whereby Freud did not equate the statistical normality of our society with 'healthy'. "Health can only be described in metapsychological terms" (assessment of each psychic process according to the coordinates of biological drive economy, dynamics and topology).

He discovered that the instinctive impulses are expressed most clearly – albeit still encoded – in the symbols of dreams as well as in the symptomatic detours of neuroticism and Freudian slips. Psychoanalysis was developed in order to clarify the causes of disorders and to restore mental health by enabling the ego to become aware of the id's needs and to find realistic, self-controlled ways to satisfy them. Freud summarized this goal of his therapy in the demand "Where id was, ego shall became", defining the underlying libido as driving energy of all innate needs and equating it with the Eros (universal desire) of Platonic philosophy.

Freud attached great importance to coherence of his structural model. The metapsychological specification of the functions and interlocking of the three instances was intended to ensure the full connectivity of this 'psychic apparatus' with biological sciences, in particular Darwin's theory of evolution of species, including mankind with his natural behavior, thinking ability and technological creativity. Such a model of health is indispensable for the diagnostic process (sickness can only be realized as a deviation from the optimal cooperation of all mental-organic functions), but Freud had to be modest. He came to the conclusion that he had to leave his metapsychological-based model of the soul in the unfinished state of a torso because – as he stated one last time in Moses and Monotheism – there was no well-founded primate research in the first half of 20th century. Without knowledge of the instinctively formed group structure of our genetically closest relatives in animal kingdom (instead of Freud's single 'super-strong primal father', they show highly social male teams, but despite their remarkable intelligence still no ability to form political inter-group organizations), his thesis of the Darwinian primordial horde as presented for discussion in Totem and Taboo cannot be tested and, where necessary, replaced by a realistic model.

Darwin's horde life and its abolition through the introduction of monogamy (as a political agreement between the sons who murdered the horde's polygamous forefather) embodies the evolutionary and the cultural-historical core of psychoanalysis. The aspect of violent elimination of natural horde life is decisive for Freud's Unease in Culture; his assumption of the outbreak of the Oedipus complex in human history is based on it. It led to the formulation of rules of behavior such as the prohibition of adultery and incest, and thus to the beginning of totemic cultures. Manifested in this kind of customs, traditions and ritual education, some of them changed through intermediate stage of feudalism to modern nations, endowed with their monotheism (which centralized the diversity of totems in an abstract omnipotent singel deity), power-hierarchical structures of military, trade and politics (s. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego).