Psychoanalysis And Religion

PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious processes and their influence on conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on dream interpretation, psychoanalysis is also a talk therapy method for treating of mental disorders."All psychoanalytic theories include the idea that unconscious thoughts and feelings are central in mental functioning." Milton, Jane, Caroline Polmear, and Julia Fabricius. 2011. ''A Short Introduction to Psychoanalysis''. SAGE. p. 27."What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might be considered an unfortunately abbreviated description, Freud said that anyone who recognizes transference and resistance is a psychoanalyst, even if he comes to conclusions other than his own. … I prefer to think of the analytic situation more broadly, as one in which someone seeking help tries to speak as freely as he can to someone who listens as carefully as he can with the aim of articulating what is going on between them and why. David Rapaport (1967a) once defined the analytic situation as carrying the method of interpersonal relationship to its last consequences." Gill, Merton M. 1999.
Psychoanalysis, Part 1: Proposals for the Future
" ''The Challenge for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: Solutions for the Future''. New York: American Mental Health Foundation. Archived 10 June 2009. 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.Mitchell, Juliet. 2000. ''Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessment of Freudian Psychoanalysis''. London: Penguin Books. p. 341. 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 authors death, neo-Freudian thinkers like Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan created some subfields.Birnbach, Martin. 1961. ''Neo-Freudian Social Philosophy''. Stanford: Stanford University Press. p. 3. 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, and its effectiveness as a treatment remains contested, although its influence on psychology and psychiatry is undisputed."Psychoanalysis has existed before the turn of the 20th century and, in that span of years, has established itself as one of the fundamental disciplines within psychiatry. The science of psychoanalysis is the bedrock of psychodynamic understanding and forms the fundamental theoretical frame of reference for a variety of forms of therapeutic intervention, embracing not only psychoanalysis itself but also various forms of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy and related forms of therapy using psychodynamic concepts." Sadock, Benjamin J., and Virginia A. Sadock. 2007. ''Kaplan and Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry'' (10th ed.). Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. p. 190."Psychoanalysis continues to be an important paradigm organizing the way many psychiatrists think about patients and treatment. However, its limitations are more widely recognized and it is assumed that many important advances in the future will come from other areas, particularly biologic psychiatry. As yet unresolved is the appropriate role of psychoanalytic thinking in organizing the treatment of patients and the training of psychiatrists after that biological revolution has borne fruit. Will treatments aimed at biologic defects or abnormalities become technical steps in a program organized in a psychoanalytic framework? Will psychoanalysis serve to explain and guide supportive intervention for individuals whose lives are deformed by biologic defect and therapeutic interventions, much as it now does for patients with chronic physical illness, with the psychoanalyst on the psychiatric dialysis program? Or will we look back on the role of psychoanalysis in the treatment of the seriously mentally ill as the last and most scientifically enlightened phase of the humanistic tradition in psychiatry, a tradition that became extinct when advances in biology allowed us to cure those we had so long only comforted?" Michels, Robert. 1999.
Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry: A Changing Relationship
" ''The Challenge for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: Solutions for the Future''. New York: American Mental Health Foundation. Archived 6 June 2009. 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.

Overview

One of Freud's central arguments is that the contents of the unconscious largely determine cognition and behaviour, describing this as ''the third insult to mankind.'' While the first is said to consist of the '''cosmic scandal triggered by Copernicus, th''e'' second as ''biological'' one by Darwin's realisation 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, internalised 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 summarised 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.

Oedipus rising

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 behaviour, thinking ability and technological creativity. Such a model of health is indispensable for the diagnostic process (''sickness'' can only be realised 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 organisations), 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 behaviour 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 centralised 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).

Freud's thesis of the violent introduction of monogamous cohabitation stands in contrast to the religiously enigmatic reports about the origin of first human couples on earth as an expression of divine will, but closer to the ancient trap to pacify political conflicts among the groups of Neolithic mankind. Examples include Prometheus' uprising against Zeus, who created Pandora as a fatal wedding gift for Epimetheus to divide and rule this titanic brothers; Plato's myth of the spherical people cut into isolated individuals for the same reason; and the similarly resolved revolt of inferior gods in the Flood epic Atra-Hasis. Nonetheless, without examination in the light of modern primate research, as demanded by Freud, his ideas of hord life and its abolation remain in the status of an unproven hypothesis of paleoanthropology, merely a "''just so story'' as a not unpleasant English critic wittily called it. But I mean it honours a hypothesis if it shows the capability of creating context and understanding in new areas."

According to Freud, this hypothesis explains the present-day son's conflict with his father over his mother, naming this view after Sophocles' tragedy ''Oedipus'', and supplementing it with case studies such as the genital ''Phobia of a five-year-old boy''. However, the author not only discovered this complex and the 'oral fixatet' Syndrom of Narzissos' regress back into amniotic fluid (as far as possible given the state of science at the time), but also devised a hypothesis of healthy emotional development, which presupposes the natural relationships of Homo sapiens from birth and takes place in three successive stages: the oral, anal and genital phases. Whereby the sexual drive of the latter takes a no less genetically determined ‘latency’ break – the ''Sleeping Beauty'' – between the ages of about 7 and 12 for the benefit of social-intellectual growth.

Traditional setting

Psychoanalysts place large emphasis on experiences of early childhood, and try to overcome infantile amnesia

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases