PSYCHOANALYSIS

The term psychoanalysis is currently used in three ways:

1. It is a school or system of psychology that emphasizes the holistic, dynamic aspects of
behavior and the role of childhood experiences in adult personality.
2. It is a technique for investigating the unconscious aspects of the mind.
3. It is a therapy to treat mental disorders.

Historically speaking the first two aspects grew out of the third. Psychoanalysis was born in the
clinic in the
sense that Freud derived his theory and methods of investigation in the process of treating
mental patients. Very soon the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society was formed consisting of
Freud's earliest followers- Adler, Jung, Rank, Ferenczi etc, many of these rebelled against
Freud to form their own groups within psychoanalysis. Later, neo-Freudians emphasized the
social influences on man and the importance of ego rather than the id. In the latter quarter of
this century, Erikson, who considers himself a Post-Freudian rather than a Neo-Freudian,has
been the leading figure in psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis may be evaluated on the basis of McGeoch's criteria as follows:

1. Definition of psychology: Freud was a psychiatrist and not from the psychological tradition.
As such, psychoanalysis was probably to him, the only psychology worthy of the name. He was
interested in developing a systematic framework but not in stating [Link] pointed out
some salient features of psychoanalysis, providing an implicit definition of psychology from the
analytic view. Psychoanalysis is a discipline that began in the study of neuroses through the
techniques of hypnosis, dream analysis, and free association. It emphasizes unconscious
motivational conditions. It has broadened its fields and methods of study to include
anthropological investigation, laboratory experiments, testing techniques, and the study of
normal persons, cultures, and cultural records.

Basic Postulates:
According to Munroe (1955) all varieties of analysts accept four basic assumptions:
a) Psychic life is determined.
b) Unconscious plays a dominant role in human behavior.
c)Motives are the most important explanations of behavior.
d) The history of the organism is important in current behavior particularly parent-child
relationships.

Orthodox (Freudian analysts) accept several additional ideas which may be summarized
as follows:
e) Psychic energy stems from the eros and thanatos.
Structure of personality: Id, Ego, and Superego.
g) Dynamics of personality - Personality is in a consistent state of conflict and anxiety.
h) Ego uses defense mechanisms against anxiety.
i) Psychosexual stages of development of personality.
Neo - Freudians have emphasized the social factors in the development and functioning of the
ego.

1.​ Nature of the data: The basic data of psychoanalysis come from the therapeutic setting.
They are the data of verbal reports, a type of introspection. Operationally speaking, the
analyst has nothing to do with the past of the patient. It is the report about the past that
is important. Psychoanalysis is a dynamic, not a genetic method, working with
contemporary rather than with historical data. The past events must be inferred from the
kind of data collected. The analyst must play the role of therapist during an analytic
session and can take the detached role of scientist only after the session is over.
2.​ Mind-Body Position: Freud was modern in this respect, he did not much concern
himself with this question. Freud self-consciously declared himself a psychophysical
parallelist. He held that psychical processes cannot occur in the absence of physiological
processes and that the latter must precede the former.
3.​ Principles of Connection: Since psychoanalysis developed outside academic
psychology, it might not have treated the problem of connection as such. However, Jung
emphasized association in his early work. Even earlier, the free-association method
became a key feature of psychoanalysis. A recognition of the fact that the classic
principles of contiguity, similarity, and contrast are applicable to motives as well as ideas
enables analysts to recognize connections that are not apparent to the academic
psychologist. The determination of associations by these factors also explains why the
patient's free associations involve material relevant to the patient's basic problems.
These problems beget motives, which in turn control the association. Other and more
complex principles are needed to explain why certain symptoms arise from associated
problems and why certain manifest content arises from its latent content in the dream.
These are the special principles of symbolism, distortion, displacement, and
condensation. Finally, there are the defense mechanisms of the ego, such as
rationalization and projection. They explain the connections between some overt
behaviors and their motivational bases.
4.​ Principles of selection: In most systems, the principles of selection and connection are
the obverse of each other. Here the principles of connection are also involved in
selection. These principles determine the symbols that must be selected in order to give
vent to repressed impulses. Analysts have emphasized the selectivity exercised in the
movement of material into consciousness from the preconscious and unconscious more
than they have the selection of stimuli in the environment. Motivation is the key to
selection as well as to connection. The selection of an idea or memory depends upon
the dynamic balance between repressive forces and the instinctual forces that are
striving to get the repressed material expressed. Repression acts selectively to remove
material from consciousness and resistance acts to keep out the emotionally toned
material. The job of the analyst is to redistribute the available libidinal energy so that the
repressive forces of the ego or superego are lessened relative to the expressive forces.
Often the libido attached to the repressed material is so strong that it forces its own
selection for acting out in a disguised form. For example, repressed hostility may be
 expressed through its projection onto other persons, who are then thought to be hostile.
The ego is continuously selecting appropriate repressed materials for such symbolic
expression. Thus, Freud developed in detail principles of selection and connection for
cases that had previously been regarded as arbitrary and lawless. He extended the
principles to the unconscious, where different laws were required and this extension is at
the heart of his system.

CRITICISMS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS:
In his own time Freud was almost universally criticized. Today the outraged emotions have
subsided, but the cognitive rationale of the criticism cannot be denied. The specific points in the
critique are:
1.​ Immorality: The lay public is vindictive towards psychoanalysis due to its overemphasis
on sex and attempts to explain the conscience, soul, and religion in terms of basic
biological drives. Freud's idea of infantile sexuality extended the concept of sexuality to
children and advocated less repressive attitudes. It continues to anger many decent,
moral people.
2.​ Origin: Several critics have pointed out that psychoanalytic theory is colored by the
personality of the theonist. The theory is thus subjective, not objective. Freud's theory
may have been affected by his close attachment to his mother, his Jewish background,
and child abuse by his father. Jung's religious ideas may be due to his upbringing as a
minister's son. Adler changed his theory constantly to appease his critics. Erikson's idea
of psychological moratorium comes from his personal search for identity as a youth.
Thus observer bias cannot be ruled out in psychoanalysis.
3.​ Dogmatism and Cultishness: Freud dominated psychoanalysis like a guru. His
followers formed a committee, rebels were thrown out (and founded their own rival
schools), only the analyzed could analyse, Critics are said to be manifesting resistance
because they did not "believe". Not surprisingly psychoanalysis is sometimes seen more
as a religion than a science and has the mystique and aura of a cult.
4.​ Questionable validity of initial data: Psychoanalytical theory is based on a handful of
clinical [Link] is questionable how far a theory derived on the basis of a few
abnormal women, is applicable to all normal human beings. Moreover there is no way of
checking the authenticity of data supplied by these patients during therapy. They could
be lying consciously or unconsciously, faking their symptoms or simply acting upon the
inadvertent suggestions of the therapist.
5.​ Lack of measurement: Psychoanalytic concepts and ideas cannot be subjected to
measurement. Id Ego and Super ego are not real, they are inferred (some would say
imagined) variables whose dynamics are lost in the mist of the unconscious. The nature
and amount of tensions, conflicts, etc. cannot even be measured. Then how can they be
studied scientifically? How can causal relationships be established? How can predictions
be made?
6.​ Lack of empirical evidence: Though attempts have been made to study specific
hypotheses derived from psychoanalytic theory, they are seldom successful. Too often
the hypotheses investigated are trivial, or the experimental investigator has not taken the
trouble to get more than a superficial knowledge of psychoanalytic theory. The few
 successful researches are at the University of New York by Silverman (1983) and at the
University of Michigan by Shevrin and his associates (1980), both of whom have studied
the effects of unconscious subliminal messages on behavior.
7.​ Criticism of Psychoanalytical Therapy: Toulmin (1948) held that therapeutic failure is
as fatal to an explanation in psychoanalysis as a predictive failure is to an explanation in
[Link] test of the Psychoanalytical theory is in the clinic. It is found that
psychoanalysis succeeds as a method of treatment only for a short period, for neuroses,
and for YAVIS patients (Schofield, 1964). Yet Lazaus (1971) found that ten out of twenty
behaviorists who were undergoing therapy were in psychoanalytic therapy, the rest
scattered across a number of other types, none of which was behavioral. Moreover,
failure of therapy does not automatically imply a failure of the theory. Therapy may fail
simply because complete control is not possible in the clinical case.
8.​ Loss of Humanism: Critics have charged that Freud has emphasized the dark side of
the psyche. Essentially a pessimist, coming from a minority Jewish background he gave
a view of an anxiety-ridden human being constantly fighting his own nature. However,
Bettelheim has held that Freud's decidedly humanistic orientation has simply been lost in
translation from German to English. As an example, what is read as "mental activity" was
actually written by Freud as "activity of the soul.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS:
Paradoxically, rejected as a scientific system, psychoanalysis remains popular as a contributor
to science and human knowledge. Even by his critics, Freud is regarded as a genius that
contributed to many fields besides psychology.
Specifically psychoanalysis has made the following contributions.
1.​ It stimulated thinking about and observation of neglected aspects of psychology such as
the unconscious, childhood, irrational, emotional etc. He developed provocative
explanations of behaviors earlier considered outside the realm of science such as
dreams and errors. Thus psychoanalysis increased the scope of psychology.
2.​ Freud pointed out the inadequacies of introspection. He developed free-association and
dream analysis for the study or the unconscious - something that has been compared to
the development of the microscope to study cellular processes. Hall and Lindzey (1957)
stated that Freud's use of internal consistency to check hypotheses was his important
contribution. Internal consistency implies crosschecking an idea. A hypothesis is verified
if all indications are consistent. A large amount of data on a single case is required for
[Link] has contributed intensive studies of individual cases unlike those
available anywhere else. Thus psychoanalysis had made important contributions to the
techniques and methods of psychology.
3.​ Psychoanalytical therapy helped to dispel the idea that mental illness was due to
demons or divine interference. Freud showed that seeds of abnormality exist in all of us
and mental illness can be conquered by rational self-understanding. By eradicating the
distinction between abnormal and normal, Freud helped in the application of psychology
for the benefit of mankind.
4.​ Psychoanalysis has been applied to a host of areas outside psychology such as art,
architecture literature, music, sociology. politics, religion, etc. The average person's
 vocabulary includes psychoanalytical words. Often people analyse others and
themselves using psychoanalytic modes Thus psychoanalysis has increased the
popularity of psychology among laymen and other areas of knowledge.

Conclusion:
Though as a theory, psychoanalysis is "unbelievably bad" (Farrell, 1951) the influence of
Psychoanalysis has not decreased. In fact, currently there is a resurgence of interest in
psychoanalysis and it is becoming the training objective of an increasing number of clinical
psychologists. However, theory construction in psychoanalysis has stagnated. It seems to be an
era of consolidation rather than [Link] are seldom discarded unless they are
replaced by a better theory. Currently psychoanalysis fills the need for a model that will "go
anywhere, do anything, and be good at dealing with people" (Walker, 1957). Horwitz (1963)
perhaps best expresses the implicit feeling of scientists, clinicians and lay public, when he
says,"Psychoanalysis is not the best theory of human behaviour, it is the only theory".