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Freudian Psychoanalysis As The Forerunner Of All Psychotherapeutic Methods

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Reading response 3
Jones and Butman (2012) view psychoanalysis as the forerunner of all psychotherapeutic methods. Freudian psychoanalysis theorizes that all human behavior is influenced by early childhood experiences. Freud argues that human behavior is mostly unconscious and driven by conflicting desires, feelings, fears, and motives. The goal of psychoanalysis is to resolve intrapsychic conflict by bringing into conscious awareness the unconscious desires and motives of an individual. Through free association, the unconscious is made conscious, and unresolved conflict or anxiety is resolved. Psychoanalysis also seeks to challenge self-defeating coping methods or defense mechanisms and aims to replace the negative coping methods with more effective coping mechanism (Jones & Butman, 2012) Freud’s model of personality posits that:
1. There are three levels of consciousness: the conscious experiences, the preconscious experiences, and unconscious experiences, however, all behavior is determined by unconscious experiences.
2. Human Behavior is determined by past unresolved events from childhood.
3. Human behavior is determined by the interaction of sexual and aggressive drives.
4. Personality is structured in terms the id, ego and superego. The id is pleasure driven, and seeks to satisfy its needs. The ego is reality based and fulfills the wishes and demands of the id in the outside world. The superego, a split-off from the ego, characterizes internalized values and moral

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