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Five Key Concepts Of Psychoanalysis

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Psychoanalysis was the name given by Sigmund Freud to a system of interpretation and therapeutic treatment of psychological disorders. (McLeod, 2007) In particular, we present five key concepts on psychoanalytic therapy: structure of personality, psychosexual stages, defense mechanism, anxiety, and the unconscious mind.

First of all we start off with the structure of personality, which consists of 3 systems: the id, the ego & superego. Each and individual has their own functions such as the id, it starts from a person who is at birth and driven by the pleasure principle. They will be out of awareness and demand for something to be done. (Snowden, 2010, p.126) Adding on to the next system is the ego that begins to develop after birth. It makes decisions, controls the actions and solving problem. Lastly …show more content…

In classical psychoanalysis they uses free association method. The primary goal is to make unconscious material conscious and to promote understanding. Therefore, clients are allow to say anything which they would like to express no matter how illogical the problems could be. From here on, the therapist’s duty is to listen to the feeling that has been expressed by them. (Corey, 2001) However in contemporary psychoanalysis, therapists simply do not instruct clients to talk at length about their problems, instead of that they had to figure out clearly what does the clients experiencing and discovered in the moment due to time. Joffe, H., & Elsey, J. W. B. (2014). Free Association in Psychology and the Grid Elaboration Method. US: Educational Publishing Foundation, 18(3), 173-175. Another comparison of it is that the classical “lying on the couch”, it took about 5 times per week while as for contemporary, they will get involved in dream analysis. Contemporary psychoanalysis has challenged many of the fundamental assumptions about traditional psychoanalytic theory and treatment. Perhaps

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