Freud:

Psychodynamics:

This is a term used to denote the general approach which began with Freud based on the idea that a large part of the human mind is unconscious and that the contents of the unconscious (the unthinkable) are the source of a great deal of our motivation.

When the word dynamic is used it implies drive force or motivation. 

According to Freud’s principle of psychological determinism: - no aspect of human behaviour is accidental.  Freud’s conception of psychological determinism does not state that each aspect of human behaviour has a single cause – he believed in the concept of overdeterminism or multiple determination. 

According to this view every psychic event is determined by the simultaneous action of several different caused.

The unconscious:

The mind is spit into conscious an unconscious. Previous thinkers – William James had discussed this concept but Freud poised it as a dynamic force.  This raised the possibility of conflict between the contents of rational conscious mind and the unknown contents and unpredictable effects of the unconscious.  With its unrecognised and largely uncontrollable sources of energy.

So conflict can be unconscious.  It is unrecognised for what it is and likely to be revealed indirectly as accidents as disturbing emotional states, as destructiveness and all kinds of distressing symptoms.   Freud believes that the material in the unconscious is mostly of a disturbing nature and requires the expenditure of mental energy to prevent it from forcing its way into consciousness.

Freud’s Theory of the Mind

The typographical model:

According to Freud the Mind has three levels:

1. The conscious: we are aware of some parts of our mental life
2. The preconscious: memories are not conscious but can easily become conscious.
3. The unconscious: - this is material which can be made conscious only by overcoming strong resistance and a large amount of material which can never be made conscious.

Freud’s view of the unconscious was basically negative – the contents of the unconscious are not easily available to consciousness because they have been repress well out of reach of our awareness because they are painful and in some sense dangerous.  This unconscious is dynamic  - it contains memories, perceptions, fantasies, impulses, conflicts that must be pushed back or repress in order to make life less conflictual.  This defence strategy is uncostly for most people but some people it leads to the development of neuroses.

The psychical apparatus:

There are 3 structures the id, ego and superego and that all human behaviour is determined through the interaction of these three.  These are the structural components of personality.

The id is the instinctual force of behaviour which drives behaviour in the direction of gratification of the individual’s biological needs – hunger, thirst, sex….

The ego maintains the individual as a whole while it adapts to external reality.  It makes compromises between the outside world and the id and superego.

The superego

This is the internalisation of demands normally generated outside the individual by his or her culture or society.  These are dictated to the child through parenting and they give rise to the ego ideal – behaviour which the parent’s will approve.

Conscience is the child’s concept of the behaviour the parents will condemn as morally bad.

Some of the demands of the Super ego operate at the unconscious level. 

In Freud’s theory all conflict is initially fuelled by instinctual needs originating in the id. 

The libido is instinct-based energy.

Freud’s psychodynamics theory can be thought of as a hydraulic model – rather like a boiling kettle.  It makes sense to think of ideas and memories as being charged with energy.

The term Cathexis is the quantity of energy attached to an idea rather like a quantity of electric charge.

Freud’s theory is an instinct theory because instinctual; needs in the id and the fundamental sources of psychic energy – the libido.   Freud’s theory of psychodynamics is an ego psychology because the health of the individual depends on the strength of the ego and its ability to harness instinctual energy to subdue the demands of the id, the super ego and external reality.

The id is always governed by the pleasure principle and makes demands on the ego for satisfaction of its instinctual needs.  The idea is to avoid pain and seek pleasure.

The ego has to modify these demands within the restrictions imposed on it by the super ego. 

The ego gradually gains strength in childhood and so the reality principle is achieved.

The result of conflict between the id, the ego and the super ego is anxiety.

Anxiety may be the sing of external danger – this is objective anxiety – avoidance.

Much anxiety is a sign of internal danger which is usually unconscious – this resides in childhood memories of painful events – trauma.

Internal danger is signalled by anxiety which can be overwhelming which can only be warded off by preventing it from reaching consciousness.   Or removed by one of the ego defence mechanisms.

Neurotic anxiety is rooted in instinctual impulses

Moral anxiety with condemnations of the super ego.

Repression prevents dangerous issues reaching the surface – thus memories are shut out. 

Instincts and sexuality

Bocock:

What Freud meant by sexuality is much wider in its connotations that genital intercourse between male and female and also due to his assertion that there is no basic sociability no heard instinct in men (pp 38 – 39).

The main implication of this assertion is that energy from sexuality has to be used for binding people together in social groups of all kinds, families, friends, and nations…

There is no simple kind of sexual liberation possible which will eradicate the neuroses cause by sexual repression without producing social changes only some of which may be controllable in rational ways.

The aims of sexual activity may focus on any of the erotogenic zones, that is, those parts of the skin or those organs of the body, the stimulation of which produces sexual pleasure.  An infant uses the mouth as the first organ from which pleasure can be derived through sucking at the breast and imbibing the warm milk.  In adults the use of the mouth and lips in kissing is a frequently permitted act of oral gratification, although eating and drinking remain a weaker gratification for the oral sexual impulses. (p. 40)

The concept of instinct can be criticised as being logically circular.  This is because the behaviour which is to be explained as the result of an instinct being present in the organism is itself, the main evidence for the existence of instinct in the fist place.  To say that there is an instinct called hunger and that the evidence for its existence is the fact that we feel hungry does not explain anything. 

The notion which has about instincts is not primarily about reproduction but the generalised capacity of the human organism to find erotic satisfaction from any part of the body being caressed or stimulated quite apart from the act of reproduction.  These organ pleasures are the derivatives, no doubt, from the basic reproductive needs of the species.  They have an independence of their own in the experience of human beings.

The concept of the instincts are found in the paper  ‘Instincts and their Vicissitudes’.

It is a borderline concept between the mental and the physical and so the impulse arises from within the organism and not as a stimulus from without.  

Human beings do share some characteristics with animals – such as sexual reproduction but they are distinct in their capacity for symbolic communication as distinct from a sign system of communication used by some other species. 

An instinct has four elements:

1. Impetus  - this is the motor force the energy behind instinctual demands.
2. Aim of the instinct – always satisfaction.
3. The object is that in or through which the object can achieve its aim. The object can be the subject’s own body.
4. The source of the instinct  ‘is that somatic process in an organ or part of the body from which there results a stimulus represented in mental life by an instinct.

Freud began his work with the idea of two basic groups of antagonistic instincts:

Those concerned with reproduction – sexual instincts and those concerned with self preservation (ego instincts).   The conflict between these two is the source of neurosis.

Later he came to believe in the life instinct  - Eros which is made up of the life preserving creative drives whose energy source is the libido.  People also have a fundamental death instinct Thanatos – a death wish.

Freud’s work is based on biological concepts.  All instincts originate in the in the physical body as a source of energy.  And as having a goat  - this is behaviour which reduces tension and or gives pleasure.   When the goal is not achieved the individual experiences frustration leading to tension or pain and this eventually mobilises psychological defence mechanisms. 

In addition to a bodily source, energy and a goal, instincts require an object  - another individual which helps the person to achieve the goal. 

Hungry Infant:

Hunger arises in the body

Energised by the libido

Goal is sucking the nipple and receiving nourishment. 

The object is the nursing mother.

For post pubertal sexuality the source is genital, the energy is libidinal, the aim is orgasm and the giving and receiving of semen and the object is the loved one.

Freud developed a view of the major instincts as made up of component instincts – innate fragments of child’s behaviour which are combined and organised in during a child’s development to give shape to the full instinct. During his writing of The Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality  (1905) Freud was already coming to the view that disturbances in sexuality underlie some forms of mental illness.

Freud learned from his patients that they enjoyed sexual excitements that were not direct related to the mechanisms of reproduction. 

Freud On Sexuality (volume 7)

In the opening section: the assumption of sexual instinct.  Everyday language possesses no counterpart to the word Hunger but science makes use of the word Libido for that purpose (page 46)

Freud introduces the concept of invert:  there are three:

1. The absolute invert
2. Bisexual
3. Contingent – under certain external conditions of which inaccessibility of any normal sexual occurs. p. 47.

Homosexuals cannot be viewed as degenerate:

1. Exhibit no other deviations
2. Efficiency is unimpaired.
3. It was an institution among the ancients
4. It is widespread among many primitive peoples –the concept of degeneracy is limited to state of high civilisation.

Is inversion innate?

1. Early in their live a sexual impression occurred which left a permanent after effect in the shape of a tendency to homosexuality.
2. External influences – prison.
3. Inversion can be removed by hypnotic suggestion.

Explanation:

Inversion is neither innate nor acquired.  Freud argues that human beings are bisexual.  (Page 51 – 55).

Sexual object of the invert – psychic hermaphroditism – the sexual object of the invert is the opposite of that of the normal person.  The inverted man feels he is a woman in search of a man.

The sexual object is a reflection of the subject’s own bisexuality p56.

Footnote page 56 – 59 

All human beings are capable of making a homosexual choice.

Inverts are not feminine characteristics – page 53.

The normal sexual aim is regarded as being a union of the genitals in the act know as copulation which leads to the release of sexual tension and the temporary extinction of the sexual instinct  - a satisfaction analogous to the sating of hunger. P61.

There are certain immediate relations to the sexual object such as touching and looking at it, which lie on the road towards copulation and are recognised as being preliminary sexual aims.  (p.62)

These are accompanied by pleasure and excitation. 

Perversions are sexual activities which either

1. Extend, in an anatomical sense beyond the regions of the body that are designed for sexual union.
2. Linger over the intermediate relations to the sexual object which would normally be traversed rapidly on the path towards the final sexual aim.

Sexual Practices   p65 - 67

1. Anal sex
2. Fetish: - the sexual aim is abandoned and the possession of a hair colour or clothing is required.
3. Touching or looking – Scopophilia.

Sadism – Masochism

Sadism

A person who feels pleasure in producing pain in someone else in a sexual relationship is also capable of enjoying as pleasure any pain which he may himself derive from sexual relations.

Richard Wollheim Freud

Central to Freud’s developmental account in terms of sexual aim is the concept of erotogenic zone of the body.  Mouth with feeding, anal zone with defecation – there are pleasurable sensations associated with the functions of these areas of the body.  Sucking at the mother’s breast is the starting point of the whole of sexual life the unmatched prototype for every later sexual satisfaction to which phantasy often recurs in times of need.

The organisation of the Libido – each organisation of the Libido is identified by reference to an erotogenic zone which enjoys primacy within it, oral, anal and genital.

The development of sexuality is neatly characterised as a linear progression moving though the various pregenital organisations of the libido- the oral, the anal and the phallic.

Freud attributed personality traits in normal adults to an interaction between inherited patterns of sexual instinct and its progression through the erotogenic zones and the constraints of the social environment.

In Freud’s theory fixation at a particular stage accounts for patterns of personality traits in individuals.  Difficulties in moving out of a stage can cause an adult to return to that stage – regression is an ego defence mechanism when an adult returns to an earlier stage in life to avoid problems.

Stages of development

1. The oral stage:  birth – to 1 year.   The source of pleasurable sensations is the mouth, the lips, and the tongue, sucking the pleasure of biting.
2. The anal stage 1-3 years.  This is associated with pleasurable sensations in the rectum.
3. The phallic stage 3- 5 years centres on the penis in boys and the clitoris in girls and culminates in the emotional crisis of the Oedipus complex.
4. Latency period – this is the beginning of puberty and the components of sexual instinct come together in adult genital sexuality.
5. Genital stage – adult sexuality.

Fixation at the oral stage can lead to excessive passivity and dependence, as a baby is totally cared for.   Or as a defensive reaction against longed for dependency, oral fixation may lead to the opposite to exaggerated independence traits – this example of a defence reaction called reaction formation.  In this the person unconsciously produces the opposite feelings and behaviours to those that might arouse anxiety.

In the phallic stage all children go through a crucial crisis which leads to the development of gender identity and ender roles and the formation of the super ego.  This is called the Oedipus complex (Electra for girls). 

The process:

1. At the age of 4 years erotic sensations become associated with sexual fantasies conscious and unconscious.  These revolve around the parent sexuality, reproduction, the need for love and the need to possess the parent of the opposite sex.  Emotions of envy and jealousy arise.
2. The child wants to displace the same sex parent and take his or her place.  The boy wants the father’s place and the girl the mother’s.  The boy wishes to be like the father – he identifies with the same sex parent and learns the appropriate gender role.
3. Boys and Girls diverge.  Around the age of four a boy’s anxiety would focus on castration as the appropriate punishment of the crime of desiring his mother.  He realises that girls do not have a penis and things of them as castrated. In order to defend himself against this castration anxiety the boy becomes his father.   In doing this he uses two defence mechanisms:  identification and introjection.

He identifies with the aggressor – the father – and in doing so he takes in (introjects) the father’s attitudes and values.   Identification and introjection are the source of the boy’s super ego and enable him to develop an appropriate gender identity. 

Freud and the Dilemmas of Psychology (Chapter 1)

Is psychoanalysis the idiosyncratic product of a distorted mind, or is it a body of though which cannot be brushed aside by reference to the troubles of its originator.’ P.9

1. Does psychoanalysis work as a therapy? ‘Freud did not claim a monopoly for psychoanalytic treatment – ‘there are many ways and means to practice psychotherapy.  All that leads to recovery are good.  In ‘Analysis terminable and Interminable’ he expresses pessimistic views about the impossibility of total cures.
2. David Bakan suggests that Freud’s inferences whether right or wrong do not stem for clinical observations but are superimposed by a fertile imagination nourished in his youth by a study of cabalistic Jewish thought.  There are parallels between cabalistic thought and psychoanalytic ideas particularly with regard to the role of sexuality.
3. Was Freud a Liar? Frank Cioffi  - Freud was a pseudo scientist engaging in a habitual and wilful employment of methodologically defective procedures.  Criticism from a positivistic perspective unconcerned with subtle interaction of invention and discovery in creative scientific thought and their assumptions that scientific work is the equivalent of operationalism and hypothesis testing.  This is the resolution of the oedipal conflict
4. Girls are supposed to suffer from penis envy and turns to her father as a love object and thus develops feminine.  Girls hope for a child. 

The Oedipus complex has been much criticised especially by feminists.

Freud developed his ideas to explain the behaviour of clients suffering from hysteria – in which physical symptoms such as partial paralysis or blindness have no physical explanation.

Freud and Breuer believed that catharsis - the cleansing effect of released emotion was the source of cure.  The case study Anna O (Breuer).  She had hysterical paralysis and symptoms which included an unexplained cough.  The cure came when she remember the original occasion of her cough whilst under hypnosis: while nursing her dying father she heard music come from a neighbouring house – her desire to go to the dance rather than nurse he dying father caused such painful guilt that her memory was repressed only to produce the cough when every she heard the dance music – this was the establishment of the talking cure.