The Psychoanalysis Timeline:
The Mini-Dictionary of Classic and Modern Trends in Psychoanalysis through the years!!!
The Psychology Sessions: Classic and Modern Trends in Psychology
The essence of psychoanalysis
As Raymond Corsini and Alan Auerabach, 'lyrically', mention, Psychoanalysis was the 'brain child' of one of those great thinkers who 'disturb the sleep of the world', the Viennese-Jewish physician, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). The term psychoanalysis is used in three ways: 1) to designate a loosely knit body of ideas on the nature of the human mind, particularly, personality development and psychopathology, 2) to describe a technique of therapeutic intervention in a range of psychological disturbances, and, 3) to designate a method of investigation.
The central task of psychoanalysis (as therapy) is to uncover liable pathogenic memories; this could give way to the search for fantasies, and with the theoretical shift away from 'instincts and their vicissitudes' to the discerning of configurations of characteristically adaptive patterns of human relationships and of work in a particular society.
After extensive research, I managed to put together the most interesting (in my opinion) psychoanalytical terms, which, still, have a considerable effect on everyday life. Let's get on the Psychoanalysis Timeline:
- Apathy: The absence of any emotion whatsoever. It must be distinguished from despair, which is the loss of hope, and boredom, which is due to blocking of expressive activity, whether for external or neurotic reasons. According to Greenson (1949), apathy can be a life-saving defence in extreme situations.
- Behaviour disorder: Psychiatric diagnostic
term embracing psychopathy, perversions, and the addictions, conditions
which have in common that their 'symptoms' consist of behaviour of which society disapproves. Theoretically, it can be regarded as the opposite of the neurosis, since it is characterised by deficiency not excess of inhibition.
- Borderline personality disorder: A borderline case is a patient who is on the border between psychosis and neurosis: The most salient symptom of ascribed to these personalities is the depth and variability of their moods, since they, typically, experience extended periods of dejection and disillusionment, interspersed on occasion with brief excursions of euphoria and significantly more frequent episodes of irritability, self-destructive acts, and impulsive anger (Raymond J. Corsini, 1998). Famous bipolar personalities: Marilyn Monroe, Catherine-Zeta Jones, Virginia Wolf, Amy Winehouse, Vincent Van Gogh, Britney Spears, Frank Sinatra, Edgar Allan Poe, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stephen Fry (www.wikipedia.org).
- Bulimia: 'A morbid hunger' - the complete medical term in Latin is bulimia nervosa. An eating disorder characterised by binge eating and self-induced vomiting and purging. It can alternate with anorexia nervosa (psychogenic absence of appetite of sufficient severity to threaten health or life).
- Causality (Charles Rycroft, 1995): The conception that events can be explained as the necessary consequence of prior events, the latter being the causes and the former the effects. Psychoanalysis is generally regarded as a causal theory, since it explains present events, symptoms, etc., in terms of the prior experiences of the subject.
- Creativity: The capacity to arrive at novel but valid solutions to problems, and, also, the capacity to create imaginative products, which can be compelling, convincing or significant. Acoording to Sigmund Freud (1908), creative activity is a form of neurotic daydreaming (this theory has been, later, challenged by Freud himself and other psychologists.
- Defense mechanism: A usually unconscious mental process used to protect oneself from painful thoughts or feelings. It was, first, introduced as a term by Sigmund Freud (1905). Typical defence mechanisms include: denial, repression, projection and rationalization.
- Displacement: The process by which the individual shifts interest from one object or an activity to another in such a way that the latter becomes an equivalent or substitute for the other (e.g., dreaming, symbolization and sublimation).
- Dopamine (Christian Jarrett, 2011): A naturally occuring chemical which is produced in several areas of the brain. As well as assisting with motor functions and concentration, it promotes feelings of euphoria and joy.
- Emotion: A state of both body and mind consisting of a subjective feeling which is either pleasurable or unpleasant but never neutral, and is accompanied by expressive behaviour or posture and by physiological changes (Charles Rycroft, 1995).
- Empathy: According to recent research studies, it is 'the power of projecting one's personality into the object of contemplation'. Therefore, the capacity to put oneself into the other person's shoes.
- Intuition (from the Latin word intuito, meaning to look at): It is a type of knowledge gained through instinct, rather than a rational process. Additionally, it is the immediate apprehension of an object by the mind without the intervention of any reasoning process.
- Motive: The 'inner force' which drives a person towards an end or goal. The goal may have either a positive or negative effect.
- Narcissism: First used by Havelock Ellis and Nacke, it is a type of sexual perversion in which the subject's preferred object is his own body; it is a form of self-love, and it can, also, refer to the tendency to use oneself as the point of reference round which experience is organised. In a sense, it can be similar to egocentrism, and can lead to Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which was popularised by Kohut (1972, 1978).
- Neuroticism: One of the big five personality traits, which is associated with a stronger reaction to aversive situations - a struggle to cope with everyday stress - and in extreme cases may lead to depression and anxiety. All people have aspects of all 5 personality traits, to varying degrees.
- Obsession: It is the idea or group of ideas which persistently obtrudes itself on the patient's consciousness despite his will and despite the fact that he himself recognizes its abnormality (Charles Rycroft, 1995).
- Parapraxis: According to Sigmund Freud ('The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 1901), it is a faulty action due to the interference of certain uncoscious wish, conflict, or train of thought. Classic examples of parapraxes are the slips of the tongue and pen.
- Personality types: It was, first, introduced as a term by Carl Gustav Jung (1921) initially, referring to personality functions and dimensions such as extroversion - introversion, thinking - feeling and intuition - sensing. Based on his theory of 'Personality Types', people differ in the importance attached to external perceptions or internal ideas, and in the way they make decisions or gather information.
- Phobia: It, usually, refers to the symptom of experiencing unnecessary and excessive anxiety in specific situations or in the presence of a particular object. The most common types of phobia are: agoraphobia: anxiety in open spaces and claustrophobia: anxiety in an enclosed space.
- Psyche: It is a Freudian term, which indicates the mind. Its origin is Greek and is, usually, contrasted with 'soma' (from Greek, as well).
- Psychodrama (Charles Rycroft, 1995): It is a form of psychotherapy in which the patient is required to act a part in some drama constructed with special reference to his symptoms or problems, the other parts being taken by members of the therapeutic team.
- Repression: The defense mechanism by which an unacceptable idea or impulse is rendered unconscious. Further, repression presupposes a repressing agency, either the egoor the super-ego, and a stimulus, which is anxiety, leading to division of the personality into two parts.
- Rorschach test: It is considered the most sophisticated projective test, in which the subject must describe what he/she can see into a series of symmetrical ink-blots, some of which are coloured, his answers being used as evidence of his phantasy life, personality structure, psychiatric diagnosis and, even, intelligence. It was designed in 1921 by Swiss psychoanalyst, Hermann Rorschach. Although, it is not widely used anymore compared to the MMPI, it has influnced pop culture and, even, the pop and rock music scene: in 2006, it was used as the main theme of Gnarls Barkley's music video for his No1 smash hit, 'Crazy'.
- Schizophrenia: The term was invented by Eugen Bleuler (1908) in order to describe the mental illness previously known as dementia praecox and, nowadays, used generally by psychiatryto describe functional psychoses in which the symptoms are withdrawal and poverty of affect, delusions, hallucinations, confusion, autistic and schizophrenic thinking (in which syntax is disrupted) and disturbances in the sense of identity.
- Sensation (Charles Rycroft, 1995): The irreducible elements of experience out of which perceptions and conceptions are constructed, e.g. light, sound, smell, touch, taste, pain, heat and cold. Sensations depend on the organ stimulated not on the object stimulating it.
- Thinking: One of the most important psychoanalytical terms of the 20th century, which refers to any form of mental activity in which ideas are involved. Furthermore, it is the mental activity which is concerned with the solution of problems; it was, initially, popularised by Sigmund Freud (1900, 1911, 1917) and, then, Carl Gustav Jung (1921). Freud distinguished thinking into the primary and secondaryprocesses, the former being that form of mental functioning characteristic of the unconscious (id), and the latter being that characteristic of consciousness (ego).
References
Charles Rycroft (1995), A critical dictionary of Psychoanalysis, 2nd edition. London: Penguin Books.
Christian Jarrett (2011), 30-second psychology: The 50 most
thought-provoking theories, each explained in half a minute. London:
Icon Books UK.
Raymond J. Corsini and Alan J. Auerbach (1998), Concise
Encyclopedia of Psychology, 2nd edition. New York, USA: John Wiley &
Sons, Inc.
Picture Source Links
http://izquotes.com/quote/230282,
http://mentalfloss.com/article/63241/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-son-man.
Tim Voridis
Organisational Psychologist/Consultant - Communication and Personality Specialist
'Innovation for a brighter future'.
