Pyschoanalysis: The Key To Understanding The Neurotic
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Hysteric. Neurotic. Mentally ill. To be deemed as such in the nineteenth century was to be scorned by both doctors and society at large. These poor individuals were clearly not understood during the era of revolution and change in the early twentieth century. Hysterics and other neurotics suffered from physical ailments that had no basis in reality (Boeree 3). Physicians of the time refused to treat neurotics for they considered neurosis as functional, rather than anatomical or physiological, disturbances in the nervous system (Roth 94). The “treatments” that were offered for the neurotic were crude at best. Popular remedies among physicians were hydrotherapy and electrotherapy. The former involved spraying the patient with jets of very cold, almost freezing, water, and the latter utilized currents of electricity that were run through the body or applied to local areas. Both of these therapies resulted in severe side effects including pain, nausea, skin blistering, burns, and trembling (Roth 107). Society as a whole regarded the victims of neuroses as crazy and freakish. But fortunately for the neurotic, one man saw through the stigma surrounding mental illness and became the bridge over the gap between the hysteric and the rest of society. This man was Sigmund Freud and his theory of psychoanalysis was his most significant contribution to communication. Freuds momentous contribution to psychology, his psychoanalytic theory, has catalyzed communication between patients and their analysts for the past one hundred years. This communication has made it possible for the neurotic to become a fully functioning member of society.
Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in Molavia, current day Czech Republic. He was the oldest of the eight children in a Jewish family. His father, Jacob, was a merchant and Freuds mothers senior by twenty years (Jones 3). Sigmund was fortunate to have been born during the era of life sciences. In 1859, when Sigmund was only three years old, Charles Darwin wrote the Origin of Species. If the view of Darwin put forth in his radical writing was to be accepted it meant that humans were no more than animals and, therefore, the study of them should proceed on more naturalistic lines. Men became objects of study different from animals only in complexity (Jones 4). A year later, when Freud was still a toddler, Gustav Fechner founded the science of psychology. A belief started to evolve, after the new science of physics began to flourish, that man was nothing more than an energy system that was regulated by the same natural laws that govern every other object in the cosmos. (Jones 5). The fact that Freud was born during this pivotal era would influence him immensely in later life. These strides in science paved the way for Freud and his experimental psychology. The ideas that were emerging allowed him to study humans and empirically decipher what makes the mentally ill different from the rest of the world.
Freud was both loved and despised for his most influential theory, the theory of psychoanalysis which was developed in the late 1800s after years of observation and study. Psychoanalysis is the name of a procedure for the investigation of mental processes, which are almost inaccessible in any other way (Fodor 147). Essentially, it is digging deep into the psyche to uncover any incident or feeling that would have formed the symptoms displayed in an individual. This discovery was a most fascinating one, because it supposed that a mentally ill individual could alleviate not only the effects, but eventually the illness itself simply by talking. But Freuds intriguing assumption is not a easy concept to grasp because it entails in depth concepts of personality such as consciousness and the ego that deserve examination.
Before one can understand psychoanalysis and how it relates to communication between the neurotic and society through an analyst, one must first grasp the complex premises of the theory. The first principle that preceded the psychoanalytic theory was that of consciousness, preconsciousness, and unconsciousness. Consciousness is everything that is in the mind this very moment, such as thoughts and perceptions of the outside world (Sigmund Freud 6). Preconsciousness is the stage in between consciousness and unconsciousness; it includes everything that is not entertaining the mind this moment but can be easily brought to the forefront of thought (Outline 38). The multiplication tables or ones mothers maiden name are excellent examples of preconscious material. The unconscious consists of memories, experiences, or feelings that cannot be brought to consciousness as easily as items in the preconscious (Hall 32). The conscious follows laws of logic that are foreign to the unconscious. For example, the unconscious can and does link unrelated memories or images together whereas the conscious has a logically organized system of storing information (Psychoanalysis 1). Psychoanalysis takes memories that have been repressed into the unconscious and brings them into the light of consciousness so that the patient can deal with the issue and move on with their life.
The second crucial and complex basis of psychoanalysis is the notion of the ego, id, and the superego. The ego is the centerpiece of personality, the mediator and the peacekeeper. The ego is trying to pacify three conflicting forces: the id, the superego, and reality. The id is the most basic level of all personality; in fact, id is the German word for “it” (Sigmund Freud 5). An example of the id is a crying baby that is hungry he does not know what he wants he just knows that he wants. The id does not care if what it wants is good, healthy, or even possible within the realms of reality it just knows that it wants. The id contains everything that is inherent, or instinctual. According to Freud, there are only two true instincts, eros, the love instinct and thanatoes, the death instinct. The love instinct involves both self-preservation and preservation of the species through reproduction. The death instinct was developed by Freud in his later years and claimed that everyone had a secret wish to die. He hypothesized, that humans are constantly trying to reach a point where they are free of the stress and difficulties of life, that humans have an unrealized desire to be reduced to an inorganic state (Outline 14-20). Much of Freuds work with instincts derived from Darwinian thinking.
The superego is the manifestation of parental restrictions on a persons life; it is the precipitate of years of parental control (Outline 17). The superego has but one function: the limitation of satisfaction. Freud believed that if the demands of the superego were not met then the individual would feel shame or guilt. Reality is another limiting factor for the ego to appease. Even if the ego can find a