| Psychotherapy | CBT | Psychoanalysis | Psychiatry | Expressive therapy |
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The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines Psychoanalysis as “A therapeutic method, originated by Sigmund Freud, for treating mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the patient's mind and bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind, using techniques such as dream interpretation and free association”. The OED also provides a secondary definition of “a system of psychological theory associated with this method". In the past 70 years or so, infant and child research, and new discoveries in adults have led to further modification of theory. The specifics of the analyst's interventions typically include confronting and clarifying the patient's pathological defenses, wishes and guilt. Through the analysis of conflicts, including those contributing to "resistance" (unconscious reluctance to engage in treatment or in free associating), and those involving transference onto the analyst of childish, distorted reactions, psychoanalytic treatment can clarify how patients unconsciously are their own worst enemies: how unconscious, symbolic reactions, that have been stimulated by the current-day experiences, are interfering with the analysand's enjoyment of life and causing symptoms. The various psychoses involve deficits in the autonomous ego functions of integration (organization) of thought, in abstraction ability, in relationship to reality and in reality testing. In depressions with psychotic features, the self-preservation function may also be damaged (sometimes by overwhelming depressive affect). Because of the integrative deficits (often causing what general psychiatrists call "loose associations," "blocking," "flight of ideas," "verbigeration," and "thought withdrawal"), the development of self and object representations is also impaired. Clinically, therefore, psychotic individuals manifest limitations in warmth, empathy, trust, identity, closeness and/or stability in relationships (due to problems with self-object fusion anxiety) as well. |
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