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Psychoanalysis

Samedi 25 septembre 2010

Psychoanalysis (or Freudian psychology) is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and continued by others. It is primarily devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behavior, although it can also be applied to societies. Psychoanalysis has three main components:

1.a method of investigation of the mind and the way one thinks;
2.a systematized set of theories about human behavior;
3.a method of treatment of psychological or emotional illness.
Under the broad umbrella of psychoanalysis, there are at least 22 theoretical orientations regarding human mentation and development. The various approaches in treatment called « psychoanalysis » vary as much as the theories do. The term also refers to a method of studying child development.

Freudian psychoanalysis refers to a specific type of treatment in which the « analysand » (analytic patient) verbalizes thoughts, including free associations, fantasies, and dreams, from which the analyst induces the unconscious conflicts causing the patient’s symptoms and character problems, and interprets them for the patient to create insight for resolution of the problems.

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 and those involving transference onto the analyst of distorted reactions, psychoanalytic treatment can clarify how patients unconsciously are their own worst enemies: how unconscious, symbolic reactions that have been stimulated by experience are causing symptoms.

The idea of psychoanalysis was developed in Vienna in the 1890s by Sigmund Freud, a neurologist interested in finding an effective treatment for patients with neurotic or hysterical symptoms. Freud had become aware of the existence of mental processes that were not conscious as a result of his neurological consulting job at the Children’s Hospital, where he noticed that many aphasic children had no organic cause for their symptoms. He wrote a monograph about this subject.[2] In the late 1880s, Freud obtained a grant to study with Jean-Martin Charcot, the famed neurologist and syphilologist, at the Salpêtrière in Paris. Charcot had become interested in patients who had symptoms that mimicked general paresis. Freud’s first theory to explain hysterical symptoms was the so-called « seduction theory ». Since his patients under treatment with this new method « remembered » incidents of having been sexually seduced in childhood, Freud believed that they had actually been abused only to later repress those memories. This led to his publication with Dr. Breuer in 1893 of case reports of the treatment of hysteria.[3] This first theory became untenable as an explanation of all incidents of hysteria. As a result of his work with his patients, Freud learned that the majority complained of sexual problems, especially coitus interruptus as birth control. He suspected their problems stemmed from cultural restrictions on sexual expression and that their sexual wishes and fantasies had been repressed. Between this discovery of the unexpressed sexual desires and the relief of the symptoms by abreaction, Freud began to theorize that the unconscious mind had determining effects on hysterical symptoms.

His first comprehensive attempt at an explanatory theory was the then unpublished Project for a Scientific Psychology in 1895.[4] In this work Freud attempted to develop a neurophysiologic theory based on transfer of energy by the neurons in the brain in order to explain unconscious mechanisms. He abandoned the project when he came to realize that there was a complicated psychological process involved over and above neuronal activity. By 1900, Freud had discovered that dreams had symbolic significance, and generally were specific to the dreamer. Freud formulated his second psychological theory— which postulates that the unconscious has or is a « primary process » consisting of symbolic and condensed thoughts, and a « secondary process » of logical, conscious thoughts. This theory was published in his 1900 opus magnum, The Interpretation of Dreams.[5]Chapter VII was a re-working of the earlier « Project » and Freud outlined his « Topographic Theory. » In this theory, which was mostly later supplanted by the Structural Theory, unacceptable sexual wishes were repressed into the « System Unconscious, » unconscious due to society’s condemnation of premarital sexual activity, and this repression created anxiety. Freud also discovered what most of us take for granted today: that dreams were symbolic and specific to the dreamer. Often, dreams give clues to unconscious conflicts, and for this reason, Freud referred to dreams as the « royal road to the Unconscious. »

This « topographic theory » is still popular in much of Europe, although it has been superseded in much of North America.[6] In 1905, Freud published Three Essays on the Theory of Sexualitin which he laid out his discovery of so-called psychosexual phases: oral (ages 0–2), anal (2-4), phallic-oedipal (today called 1st genital) (3-6), latency (6-puberty), and mature genital (puberty-onward). His early formulation included the idea that because of societal restrictions, sexual wishes were repressed into an unconscious state, and that the energy of these unconscious wishes could be turned into anxiety or physical symptoms. Therefore the early treatment techniques, including hypnotism and abreaction, were designed to make the unconscious conscious in order to relieve the pressure and the apparently resulting symptoms.

In On Narcissism (1915)[Freud turned his attention to the subject of narcissism. Still utilizing an energic system, Freud conceptualized the question of energy directed at the self versus energy directed at others, called cathexis. By 1917, In "Mourning and Melancholia," he suggested that certain depressions were caused by turning guilt-ridden anger on the self.[9] In 1919 in « A Child is Being Beaten » he began to address the problems of self-destructive behavior (moral masochism) and frank sexual masochism.[10] Based on his experience with depressed and self-destructive patients, and pondering the carnage of WWI, Freud became dissatisfied with considering only oral and sexual motivations for behavior. By 1920, Freud addressed the power of identification (with the leader and with other members) in groups as a motivation for behavior (Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego).[11] In that same year (1920) Freud suggested his « dual drive » theory of sexuality and aggression in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, to try to begin to explain human destructiveness.[12]

In 1923, he presented his new « structural theory » of an id, ego, and superego in a book entitled, The Ego and the Id.[13] Therein, he revised the whole theory of mental functioning, now considering that repression was only one of many defense mechanisms, and that it occurred to reduce anxiety. Note that repression, for Freud, is both a cause of anxiety and a response to anxiety. In 1926, in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, Freud laid out how intrapsychic conflict among drive and superego (wishes and guilt) caused anxiety, and how that anxiety could lead to an inhibition of mental functions, such as intellect and speech.[14]. Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety was written in response to Otto Rank, who, in 1924, published Das Trauma der Geburt (translated into English in 1929 as The Trauma of Birth), exploring how art, myth, religion, philosophy and therapy were illuminated by separation anxiety in the « phase before the development of the Oedipus complex » (p. 216). But there was no such phase in Freud’s theories. The Oedipus complex, Freud explained tirelessly, was the nucleus of the neurosis and the foundational source of all art, myth, religion, philosophy, therapy—indeed of all human culture and civilization. It was the first time that anyone in the inner circle had dared to suggest that the Oedipus complex might not be the only factor contributing to intrapsychic development

By 1936, the « Principle of Multiple Function » was clarified by Robert Waelder.[15] He widened the formulation that psychological symptoms were caused by and relieved conflict simultaneously. Moreover, symptoms (such as phobias and compulsions) each represented elements of some drive wish (sexual and/or aggressive), superego (guilt), anxiety, reality, and defenses. Also in 1936, Anna Freud, Sigmund’s famous daughter, published her seminal book, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, outlining numerous ways the mind could shut upsetting things out of consciousness.[16]

[edit] 1940s-2000s
Following the death of Freud, a new group of psychoanalysts began to explore the function of the ego. Led by Hartmann, Kris, Rappaport and Lowenstein, the group built upon understandings of the synthetic function of the ego as a mediator in psychic functioning. Hartmann in particular distinguished between autonomous ego functions (such as memory and intellect which could be secondarily affected by conflict) and synthetic functions which were a result of compromise formation. These « Ego Psychologists » of the ’50s paved a way to focus analytic work by attending to the defenses (mediated by the ego) before exploring the deeper roots to the unconscious conflicts. In addition there was burgeoning interest in child psychoanalysis. Although criticized since its inception, psychoanalysis has been used as a research tool into childhood development,[17] and has is still used to treat certain mental disturbances.[18] In the 1960s, Freud’s early thoughts on the childhood development of female sexuality were challenged; this challenge led to the development of a variety of understandings of female sexual development, many of which modified the timing and normality of several of Freud’s theories (which had been gleaned from the treatment of women with mental disturbances). Several researchers[19] followed Karen Horney’s studies of societal pressures that influence the development of women. Most contemporary North American psychoanalysts employ theories that, while based on those of Sigmund Freud, include many modifications of theory and practice developed since his death in 1939.

In the 2000s there are approximately 35 training institutes for psychoanalysis in the United States accredited by the American Psychoanalytic Association [4][20] which is a component organization of the International Psychoanalytical Association, and there are over 3,000 graduated psychoanalysts practicing in the United States. The International Psychoanalytical Association accredits psychoanalytic training centers throughout the rest of the world, including countries such as Serbia, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and many others, as well as about six institutes directly in the U.S. Freud published a paper entitled The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement in 1914, German original being first published in the Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse.[21]

[edit] Theories
The predominant psychoanalytic theories can be grouped into several theoretical « schools. » Although these theoretical « schools » differ, most of them continue to stress the strong influence of unconscious elements affecting people’s mental lives. There has also been considerable work done on consolidating elements of conflicting theory (cf. the work of Theodore Dorpat, B. Killingmo, and S. Akhtar). As in all fields of healthcare, there are some persistent conflicts regarding specific causes of some syndromes, and disputes regarding the best treatment techniques. In the 2000s, psychoanalytic ideas are embedded in Western culture, especially in fields such as childcare, education, literary criticism, cultural studies, and mental health, particularly psychotherapy. Though there is a mainstream of evolved analytic ideas, there are groups who follow the precepts of one or more of the later theoreticians. Psychoanalytic ideas also play roles in some types of literary analysis such as Archetypal literary criticism.

[edit] Topographic theory
Topographic theory was first described by Freud in « The Interpretation of Dreams » (1900)[22][23] The theory posits that the mental apparatus can be divided in to the systems Conscious, Pre-conscious and Unconscious. These systems are not anatomical structures of the brain but, rather, mental processes. Although Freud retained this theory throughout his life he largely replaced it with the Structural theory. The Topographic theory remains as one of the metapsychological points of view for describing how the mind functions in classical psychoanalytic theory.

[edit] Structural theory
Structural theory divides the psyche into the id, the ego, and the super-ego. The id is present at birth as the repository of basic instincts, which Freud called « Triebe » (« drives »): unorganised and unconscious, it operates merely on the ‘pleasure principle’, without realism or foresight. The ego develops slowly and gradually, being concerned with mediating between the urgings of the id and the realities of the external world; it thus operates on the ‘reality principle’. The super-ego is held to be the part of the ego in which self-observation, self-criticism and other reflective and judgemental faculties develop. The ego and the super-ego are both partly conscious and partly unconscious.

[edit] Ego psychology
Ego psychology was initially suggested by Freud in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926). The theory was refined by Hartmann, Loewenstein, and Kris in a series of papers and books from 1939 through the late 1960s. Leo Bellak was a later contributor. This series of constructs, paralleling some of the later developments of cognitive theory, includes the notions of autonomous ego functions: mental functions not dependent, at least in origin, on intrapsychic conflict. Such functions include: sensory perception, motor control, symbolic thought, logical thought, speech, abstraction, integration (synthesis), orientation, concentration, judgment about danger, reality testing, adaptive ability, executive decision-making, hygiene, and self-preservation. Freud noted that inhibition is one method that the mind may utilize to interfere with any of these functions in order to avoid painful emotions. Hartmann (1950s) pointed out that there may be delays or deficits in such functions.

Frosch (1964) described differences in those people who demonstrated damage to their relationship to reality, but who seemed able to test it. Deficits in the capacity to organize thought are sometimes referred to as blocking or loose associations (Bleuler), and are characteristic of the schizophrenias. Deficits in abstraction ability and self-preservation also suggest psychosis in adults. Deficits in orientation and sensorium are often indicative of a medical illness affecting the brain (and therefore, autonomous ego functions). Deficits in certain ego functions are routinely found in severely sexually or physically abused children, where powerful effects generated throughout childhood seem to have eroded some functional development.

Ego strengths, later described by Kernberg (1975), include the capacities to control oral, sexual, and destructive impulses; to tolerate painful affects without falling apart; and to prevent the eruption into consciousness of bizarre symbolic fantasy. Synthetic functions, in contrast to autonomous functions, arise from the development of the ego and serve the purpose of managing conflictual processes. Defenses are synthetic functions that protect the conscious mind from awareness of forbidden impulses and thoughts. One purpose of ego psychology has been to emphasize that some mental functions can be considered to be basic, rather than derivatives of wishes, affects, or defenses. However, autonomous ego functions can be secondarily affected because of unconscious conflict. For example, a patient may have an hysterical amnesia (memory being an autonomous function) because of intrapsychic conflict (wishing not to remember because it is too painful).

Taken together, the above theories present a group of metapsychological assumptions. Therefore, the inclusive group of the different classical theories provides a cross-sectional view of human mentation. There are six « points of view », five described by Freud and a sixth added by Hartmann. Unconscious processes can therefore be evaluated from each of these six points of view. The « points of view » are: 1. Topographic 2. Dynamic (the theory of conflict) 3. Economic (the theory of energy flow) 4. Structural 5. Genetic (propositions concerning origin and development of psychological functions) and 6. Adaptational (psychological phenomena as it relates to the external world).[24]

[edit] Modern conflict theory
A variation of ego psychology, termed « modern conflict theory », is more broadly an update and revision of structural theory (Freud, 1923, 1926); it does away with some of structural theory’s more arcane features, such as where repressed thoughts are stored. Modern conflict theory looks at how emotional symptoms and character traits are complex solutions to mental conflict.[25] It dispenses with the concepts of a fixed id, ego and superego, and instead posits conscious and unconscious conflict among wishes (dependent, controlling, sexual, and aggressive), guilt and shame, emotions (especially anxiety and depressive affect), and defensive operations that shut off from consciousness some aspect of the others. Moreover, healthy functioning (adaptive) is also determined, to a great extent, by resolutions of conflict.

A major objective of modern conflict-theory psychoanalysis is to change the balance of conflict in a patient by making aspects of the less adaptive solutions (also called « compromise formations ») conscious so that they can be rethought, and more adaptive solutions found. Current theoreticians following Brenner’s many suggestions (see especially Brenner’s 1982 book, The Mind in Conflict) include Sandor Abend, MD (Abend, Porder, & Willick, (1983), Borderline Patients: Clinical Perspectives), Jacob Arlow (Arlow and Brenner (1964), Psychoanalytic Concepts and the Structural Theory), and Jerome Blackman (2003), 101 Defenses: How the Mind Shields Itself).

[edit] Object relations theory
Object relations theory attempts to explain vicissitudes of human relationships through a study of how internal representations of self and of others are structured. The clinical symptoms that suggest object relations problems (typically developmental delays throughout life) include disturbances in an individual’s capacity to feel warmth, empathy, trust, sense of security, identity stability, consistent emotional closeness, and stability in relationships with chosen other human beings. (It is not suggested that one should trust everyone, for example). Concepts regarding internal representations (also sometimes termed, « introjects, » « self and object representations, » or « internalizations of self and other ») although often attributed to Melanie Klein, were actually first mentioned by Sigmund Freud in his early concepts of drive theory (1905, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality). Freud’s 1917 paper « Mourning and Melancholia », for example, hypothesized that unresolved grief was caused by the survivor’s internalized image of the deceased becoming fused with that of the survivor, and then the survivor shifting unacceptable anger toward the deceased onto the now complex self image.

Vamik Volkan, in « Linking Objects and Linking Phenomena, » expanded on Freud’s thoughts on this, describing the syndromes of « Established pathological mourning » vs. « reactive depression » based on similar dynamics. Melanie Klein’s hypotheses regarding internalizations during the first year of life, leading to paranoid and depressive positions, were later challenged by Rene Spitz (e.g., The First Year of Life, 1965), who divided the first year of life into a coenesthetic phase of the first six months, and then a diacritic phase for the second six months. Margaret Mahler (Mahler, Fine, and Bergman (1975), « The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant ») and her group, first in New York, then in Philadelphia, described distinct phases and subphases of child development leading to « separation-individuation » during the first three years of life, stressing the importance of constancy of parental figures, in the face of the child’s destructive aggression, to the child’s internalizations, stability of affect management, and ability to develop healthy autonomy.

Later developers of the theory of self and object constancy as it affects adult psychiatric problems such as psychosis and borderline states have been John Frosch, Otto Kernberg, and Salman Akhtar. Peter Blos described (1960, in a book called On Adolescence) how similar separation-individuation struggles occur during adolescence, of course with a different outcome from the first three years of life: the teen usually, eventually, leaves the parents’ house (this varies with the culture). During adolescence, Erik Erikson (1950–1960s) described the « identity crisis, » that involves identity-diffusion anxiety. In order for an adult to be able to experience « Warm-ETHICS » (warmth, empathy, trust, holding environment (Winnicott), identity, closeness, and stability) in relationships (see Blackman (2003), 101 Defenses: How the Mind Shields Itself), the teenager must resolve the problems with identity and redevelop self and object constancy.

[edit] Self psychology
Self psychology emphasizes the development of a stable and integrated sense of self through empathic contacts with other humans, primary significant others conceived of as « selfobjects. » Selfobjects meet the developing self’s needs for mirroring, idealization, and twinship, and thereby strengthen the developing self. The process of treatment proceeds through « transmuting internalizations » in which the patient gradually internalizes the selfobject functions provided by the therapist. Self psychology was proposed originally by Heinz Kohut, and has been further developed by Arnold Goldberg, Frank Lachmann, Paul and Anna Ornstein, Marian Tolpin, and others.

[edit] Jacques Lacan/Lacanian psychoanalysis
Lacanian psychoanalysis integrates psychoanalysis with semiotics and Hegelian philosophy, and is practiced throughout the world. It is especially popular in France and Latin America. Lacanian psychoanalysis is a departure from the traditional British and American psychoanalysis, which is predominantly Ego psychology. Lacan frequently used the phrase « retourner à Freud » in his seminars and writings meaning « back to Freud » as he claimed that his theories were an extension of Freud’s own, contrary to those of Anna Freud, the Ego Psychology, object relations and « self » theories and also claims the necessity of reading Freud’s complete works, not only a part of them. Lacan’s first major contributions concern the « mirror stage », the Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic, and the claim that « the unconscious is structured as a language

Though a major influence on psychoanalysis in France and parts of Latin America, Lacan and his ideas have had little to no impact on psychoanalysis or psychotherapy in the English-speaking world.[27]
]Interpersonal psychoanalysis
Interpersonal psychoanalysis accents the nuances of interpersonal interactions, particularly how individuals protect themselves from anxiety by establishing collusive interactions with others, and the relevance of actual experiences with other persons developmentally (e.g. family and peers) as well as in the present. This is contrasted with the primacy of intrapsychic forces, as in classical psychoanalysis. Interpersonal theory was first introduced by Harry Stack Sullivan, MD, and developed further by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, Clara Thompson, Erich Fromm, and others who contributed to the founding of the William Alanson White Institute and Interpersonal Psychoanalysis in general.

Culturalist psychoanalysts
Main article: Culturalist psychoanalysts
Some psychoanalysts have been labeled culturalist, because of the prominence they gave on culture for the genesis of behavior.[28] Among others, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, Harry Stack Sullivan, have been called culturalist psychoanalysts.[28] They were famously in conflict with orthodox psychoanalysts.[29]

[edit] Relational psychoanalysis
Relational psychoanalysis combines interpersonal psychoanalysis with object-relations theory and with Inter-subjective theory as critical for mental health, was introduced by Stephen Mitchell.[30] Relational psychoanalysis emphasizes how the individual’s personality is shaped by both real and imagined relationships with others, and how these relationship patterns are re-enacted in the interactions between analyst and patient. Fonagy and Target, in London, have propounded their view of the necessity of helping certain detached, isolated patients, develop the capacity for « mentalization » associated with thinking about relationships and themselves.

[edit] Interpersonal-Relational psychoanalysis
The term interpersonal-relational psychoanalysis is often used as a professional identification. Psychoanalysts under this broader umbrella debate about what precisely are the differences between the two schools, without any current clear consensus.

[edit] Intersubjective psychoanalysis
The term « intersubjectivity » was introduced in psychoanalysis by George E. Atwood and Robert Stolorow (1984). Intersubjective approaches emphasize how both personality development and the therapeutic process are influenced by the interrelationship between the patient’s subjective perspective and that of others. The authors of the interpersonal-relational and intersubjective approaches: Otto Rank, Heinz Kohut, Stephen A. Mitchell, Jessica Benjamin, Bernard Brandchaft, J. Fosshage, Donna M.Orange, Arnold « Arnie » Mindell, Thomas Ogden, Owen Renik, Irwin Z. Hoffman, Harold Searles, Colwyn Trewarthen, Edgar A. Levenson, Jay R. Greenberg, Edward R. Ritvo, Beatrice Beebe, Frank M. Lachmann, Herbert Rosenfeld and Daniel Stern.

[edit] Modern psychoanalysis
« Modern psychoanalysis » is a term coined by Hyman Spotnitz and his colleagues to describe a body of theoretical and clinical work undertaken from the 1950s onwards, with the aim of extending Freud’s theories so as to make them applicable to the full spectrum of emotional disorders. Interventions based on this approach are primarily intended to provide an emotional-maturational communication to the patient, rather than to promote intellectual insight.

[edit] Micropsychoanalysis
Micropsychoanalysis has, as Freudian psychoanalysis, the free association technique as its cornerstone. However, micropsychoanalysis complements the practice of classic Freudian psychoanalysis and supplements and enriches some theoretical concepts developed by Freud.[31] The main distintive characteristics of micropsychoanalysis are: average duration of sessions three hours, the rate of sessions is at least five per week and the study of memorabilia belonging to the analysand: personal and family pictures, [32] the making of the analysand’s Genealogical tree, the drawings of childhood houses and the study of family and love letters. The aim of these technical innovations is to facilitate the labour of free association and the establishment of a bridge with reality.[33] A micropsychoanalysis can be completed in about one year if working uninterruptedly or in about three years if working in installments of 6–9 weeks every year.[34] In the theoretical aspect, Fanti reworked the Freudian metapsychology by introducing the concepts of energy and void.[35] He also introduced the idea of the existence of different levels in the structures of the psyche put forward by Freud. For example, the unconscious and preconscious-conscious systems would comprise different levels of internal structure. According to the micropsychoanalytical model, instincts (trieb) surge from the energy, specifically from the tensional difference between energy and void.[36] A basic form of micropsychoanalysis was first conceived in the 1950s by Swiss psychiatrist Silvio Fanti [37][38] and developed systematically by himself and his collaborators, Pierre Codoni and Daniel Lysek, from the 1970s. Micropsychoanalysis is popular in France, Switzerland and Italy.

[edit] Psychopathology (mental disturbances)
[edit] Adult patients
The various psychoses involve deficits in the autonomous ego functions (see above) 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.

In patients whose autonomous ego functions are more intact, but who still show problems with object relations, the diagnosis often falls into the category known as « borderline. » Borderline patients also show deficits, often in controlling impulses, affects, or fantasies – but their ability to test reality remains more or less intact. Adults who do not experience guilt and shame, and who indulge in criminal behavior, are usually diagnosed as psychopaths, or, using DSM-IV-TR, antisocial personality disorder.

Panic, phobias, conversions, obsessions, compulsions and depressions (analysts call these « neurotic symptoms ») are not usually caused by deficits in functions. Instead, they are caused by intrapsychic conflicts. The conflicts are generally among sexual and hostile-aggressive wishes, guilt and shame, and reality factors. The conflicts may be conscious or unconscious, but create anxiety, depressive affect, and anger. Finally, the various elements are managed by defensive operations – essentially shut-off brain mechanisms that make people unaware of that element of conflict. « Repression » is the term given to the mechanism that shuts thoughts out of consciousness. « Isolation of affect » is the term used for the mechanism that shuts sensations out of consciousness. Neurotic symptoms may occur with or without deficits in ego functions, object relations, and ego strengths. Therefore, it is not uncommon to encounter obsessive-compulsive schizophrenics, panic patients who also suffer with borderline personality disorder, etc.

This section above is partial to ego psychoanalytic theory « autonomous ego functions. » As the « autonomous ego functions » theory is only a theory, it may yet be proven incorrect.

[edit] Childhood origins
Freudian theories point out that adult problems can be traced to unresolved conflicts from certain phases of childhood and adolescence. Freud, based on the data gathered from his patients early in his career, suspected that neurotic disturbances occurred when children were sexually abused in childhood (the so-called seduction theory). Later, Freud came to believe that, although child abuse occurs, not all neurotic symptoms were associated with this. He realized that neurotic people often had unconscious conflicts that involved incestuous fantasies deriving from different stages of development. He found the stage from about three to six years of age (preschool years, today called the « first genital stage ») to be filled with fantasies of having romantic relationships with both parents. Although arguments were generated in early 20th-century Vienna about whether adult seduction of children was the basis of neurotic illness, there is virtually no argument about this problem in the 21st century.

Many psychoanalysts who work with children have studied the actual effects of child abuse, which include ego and object relations deficits and severe neurotic conflicts. Much research has been done on these types of trauma in childhood, and the adult sequelae of those. On the other hand, many adults with symptom neuroses and character pathology have no history of childhood sexual or physical abuse. In studying the childhood factors that start neurotic symptom development, Freud found a constellation of factors that, for literary reasons, he termed the Oedipus complex (based on the play by Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, where the protagonist unwittingly kills his father Laius and marries his mother Jocasta). The shorthand term, « oedipal, » (later explicated by Joseph Sandler in « On the Concept Superego » (1960) and modified by Charles Brenner in « The Mind in Conflict » (1982)) refers to the powerful attachments that children make to their parents in the preschool years. These attachments involve fantasies of sexual relationships with either (or both) parent, and, therefore, competitive fantasies toward either (or both) parents. Humberto Nagera (1975) has been particularly helpful in clarifying many of the complexities of the child through these years.

The terms « positive » and « negative » oedipal conflicts have been attached to the heterosexual and homosexual aspects, respectively. Both seem to occur in development of most children. Eventually, the developing child’s concessions to reality (that they will neither marry one parent nor eliminate the other) lead to identifications with parental values. These identifications generally create a new set of mental operations regarding values and guilt, subsumed under the term « superego. » Besides superego development, children « resolve » their preschool oedipal conflicts through channeling wishes into something their parents approve of (« sublimation ») and the development, during the school-age years (« latency ») of age-appropriate obsessive-compulsive defensive maneuvers (rules, repetitive games).

[edit] Treatment
Using the various analytic theories to assess mental problems, several particular constellations of problems are particularly suited for analytic techniques (see below) whereas other problems respond better to medicines and different interpersonal interventions. To be treated with psychoanalysis, whatever the presenting problem, the person requesting help must demonstrate a desire to start an analysis. The person wishing to start an analysis must have some capacity for speech and communication. As well, they need to be able to have trust and empathy within the psychoanalytic session. Potential patients must undergo a preliminary stage of treatment to assess their amenability to psychoanalysis, at that time, and also to enable the analyst to form a working psychological model which the analyst will use to direct the treatment. Psychoanalysts mainly work with neurosis and hysteria in particular, however adapted forms of psychoanalysis are used in working with schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis. Finally, if a prospective patient is severely suicidal a longer preliminary stage may be employed, sometimes with sessions which have a twenty minute break in the middle. There are modifications of techniques due to the radically individualistic nature of each person’s analysis.

The most common problems treatable with psychoanalysis include: phobias, conversions, compulsions, obsessions, anxiety attacks, depressions, sexual dysfunctions, a wide variety of relationship problems (such as dating and marital strife), and a wide variety of character problems (for example, painful shyness, meanness, obnoxiousness, workaholism, hyperseductiveness, hyperemotionality, hyperfastidiousness). The fact that many of such patients also demonstrate deficits above makes diagnosis and treatment selection difficult.

Analytical organizations such as the International Psychoanalytic Association,[39] The American Psychoanalytic Association,[40] and the European Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy,[41] have established procedures and models for the indication and practice of psychoanalytical therapy for trainees in analysis. The match between the analyst and the patient can be viewed as another contributing factor for the indication and contraindication for psychoanalytic treatment. The analyst decides whether the patient is suitable for psychoanalysis. This decision made by the analyst, besides made on the usual indications and pathology, is also based to a certain degree by the « fit » between analyst and patient. A person’s suitability for analysis at any particular time is based on their desire to know something about where their illness has come from. Someone who is not suitable for analysis expresses no desire to know more about the root causes of their illness. An evaluation may include one or more other analysts’ independent opinions and will include discussion of the patient’s financial situation and insurances.

[edit] Techniques
The basic method of psychoanalysis is interpretation of the patient’s unconscious conflicts that are interfering with current-day functioning – conflicts that are causing painful symptoms such as phobias, anxiety, depression, and compulsions. Strachey (1936) stressed that figuring out ways the patient distorted perceptions about the analyst led to understanding what may have been forgotten (also see Freud’s paper « Repeating, Remembering, and Working Through »). In particular, unconscious hostile feelings toward the analyst could be found in symbolic, negative reactions to what Robert Langs later called the « frame » of the therapy – the setup that included times of the sessions, payment of fees, and necessity of talking. In patients who made mistakes, forgot, or showed other peculiarities regarding time, fees, and talking, the analyst can usually find various unconscious « resistances » to the flow of thoughts (sometimes called free association).

Freud’s patients would lie on this couch during psychoanalysisWhen the patient reclines on a couch with the analyst out of view, the patient tends to remember more, experience more resistance and transference, and be able to reorganize thoughts after the development of insight – through the interpretive work of the analyst. Although fantasy life can be understood through the examination of dreams, masturbation fantasies (cf. Marcus, I. and Francis, J. (1975), Masturbation from Infancy to Senescence) are also important. The analyst is interested in how the patient reacts to and avoids such fantasies (cf. Paul Gray (1994), The Ego and the Analysis of Defense).[42] Various memories of early life are generally distorted – Freud called them « screen memories » – and in any case, very early experiences (before age two) – can not be remembered (See the child studies of Eleanor Galenson on « evocative memory »).

[edit] Variations in technique
There is what is known among psychoanalysts as « classical technique, » although Freud throughout his writings deviated from this considerably, depending on the problems of any given patient. Classical technique was summarized by Allan Compton, MD, as comprising instructions (telling the patient to try to say what’s on their mind, including interferences); exploration (asking questions); and clarification (rephrasing and summarizing what the patient has been describing). As well, the analyst can also use confrontation to bringing an aspect of functioning, usually a defense, to the patient’s attention. The analyst then uses a variety of interpretation methods, such as dynamic interpretation (explaining how being too nice guards against guilt, e.g. – defense vs. affect); genetic interpretation (explaining how a past event is influencing the present); resistance interpretation (showing the patient how they are avoiding their problems); transference interpretation (showing the patient ways old conflicts arise in current relationships, including that with the analyst); or dream interpretation (obtaining the patient’s thoughts about their dreams and connecting this with their current problems). Analysts can also use reconstruction to estimate what may have happened in the past that created some current issue.

These techniques are primarily based on conflict theory (see above). As object relations theory evolved, grass supplemented by the work of Bowlby, Ainsorth, and Beebe, techniques with patients who had more severe problems with basic trust (Erikson, 1950) and a history of maternal deprivation (see the works of Augusta Alpert) led to new techniques with adults. These have sometimes been called interpersonal, intersubjective (cf. Stolorow), relational, or corrective object relations techniques. These techniques include expressing an empathic attunement to the patient or warmth; exposing a bit of the analyst’s personal life or attitudes to the patient; allowing the patient autonomy in the form of disagreement with the analyst (cf. I.H. Paul, Letters to Simon.); and explaining the motivations of others which the patient misperceives. Ego psychological concepts of deficit in functioning led to refinements in supportive therapy. These techniques are particularly applicable to psychotic and near-psychotic (cf., Eric Marcus, « Psychosis and Near-psychosis ») patients. These supportive therapy techniques include discussions of reality; encouragement to stay alive (including hospitalization); psychotropic medicines to relieve overwhelming depressive affect or overwhelming fantasies (hallucinations and delusions); and advice about the meanings of things (to counter abstraction failures).

The notion of the « silent analyst » has been criticized. Actually, the analyst listens using Arlow’s approach as set out in « The Genesis of Interpretation »), using active intervention to interpret resistances, defenses creating pathology, and fantasies. Silence is not a technique of psychoanalysis (also see the studies and opinion papers of Owen Renik, MD). « Analytic Neutrality » is a concept that does not mean the analyst is silent. It refers to the analyst’s position of not taking sides in the internal struggles of the patient. For example, if a patient feels guilty, the analyst might explore what the patient has been doing or thinking that causes the guilt, but not reassure the patient not to feel guilty. The analyst might also explore the identifications with parents and others that led to the guilt.

Interpersonal-Relational psychoanalysts emphasize the notion that it is impossible to be neutral. Sullivan introduced the term « participant-observer » to indicate the analyst inevitably interacts with the analysand, and suggested the detailed inquiry as an alternative to interpretation. The detailed inquiry involves noting where the analysand is leaving out important elements of an account and noting when the story is obfuscated, and asking careful questions to open up the dialogue.

[edit] Group therapy and play therapy
Although single-client sessions remain the norm, psychoanalytic theory has been used to develop other types of psychological treatment. Psychoanalytic group therapy was pioneered by Trigant Burrow, Joseph Pratt, Paul F. Schilder, Samuel R. Slavson, Harry Stack Sullivan, and Wolfe. Child-centered counseling for parents was instituted early in analytic history by Freud, and was later further developed by Irwin Marcus, Edith Schulhofer, and Gilbert Kliman. Psychoanalytically based couples therapy has been promulgated and explicated by Fred Sander, MD. Techniques and tools developed in the 2000s have made psychoanalysis available to patients who were not treatable by earlier techniques. This meant that the analytic situation was modified so that it would be more suitable and more likely to be helpful for these patients. M.N. Eagle (2007) believes that psychoanalysis cannot be a self-contained discipline but instead must be open to influence from and integration with findings and theory from other disciplines.[43]

Psychoanalytic constructs have been adapted for use with children with treatments such as play therapy, art therapy, and storytelling. Throughout her career, from the 1920s through the 1970s, Anna Freud adapted psychoanalysis for children through play. This is still used today for children, especially those who are preadolescent (see Leon Hoffman, New York Psychoanalytic Institute Center for Children). Using toys and games, children are able to demonstrate, symbolically, their fears, fantasies, and defenses; although not identical, this technique, in children, is analogous to the aim of free association in adults. Psychoanalytic play therapy allows the child and analyst to understand children’s conflicts, particularly defenses such as disobedience and withdrawal, that have been guarding against various unpleasant feelings and hostile wishes. In art therapy, the counselor may have a child draw a portrait and then tell a story about the portrait. The counselor watches for recurring themes—regardless of whether it is with art or toys.

[edit] Cultural variations
Psychoanalysis can be adapted to different cultures, as long as the therapist or counseling understands the client’s culture. For example, Tori and Blimes found that defense mechanisms were valid in a normative sample of 2,624 Thais. The use of certain defense mechanisms was related to cultural values. For example Thais value calmness and collectiveness (because of Buddhist beliefs), so they were low on regressive emotionality. Psychoanalysis also applies because Freud used techniques that allowed him to get the subjective perceptions of his patients. He takes an objective approach by not facing his clients during his talk therapy sessions. He met with his patients wherever they were, such as when he used free association — where clients would say whatever came to mind without self-censorship. His treatments had little to no structure for most cultures, especially Asian cultures. Therefore, it is more likely that Freudian constructs will be used in structured therapy (Thompson, et al., 2004). In addition, Corey postulates that it will be necessary for a therapist to help clients develop a cultural identity as well as an ego identity.

[edit] Cost and length of treatment
The cost to the patient of psychoanalytic treatment ranges widely from place to place and between practitioners. Low-fee analysis is often available in a psychoanalytic training clinic and graduate schools. Otherwise, the fee set by each analyst varies with the analyst’s training and experience. Since, in most locations in the United States, unlike in Ontario and Germany, classical analysis (which usually requires sessions three to five times per week) is not covered by health insurance, many analysts may negotiate their fees with patients whom they feel they can help, but who have financial difficulties. The modifications of analysis, which include dynamic therapy, brief therapies, and certain types of group therapy (cf. Slavson, S. R., A Textbook in Analytic Group Therapy), are carried out on a less frequent basis – usually once, twice, or three times a week – and usually the patient sits facing the therapist.

Many studies have also been done on briefer « dynamic » treatments; these are more expedient to measure, and shed light on the therapeutic process to some extent. Brief Relational Therapy (BRT), Brief Psychodynamic Therapy (BPT), and Time-Limited Dynamic Therapy (TLDP) limit treatment to 20-30 sessions. On average, classical analysis may last 5.7 years, but for phobias and depressions uncomplicated by ego deficits or object relations deficits, analysis may run for a shorter period of time. Longer analyses are indicated for those with more serious disturbances in object relations, more symptoms, and more ingrained character pathology (such as obnoxiousness, severe passivity, or heinous procrastination).

[edit] Training and research
Psychoanalytic training in the United States, in most locations, involves personal analytic treatment for the trainee, conducted confidentially, with no report to the Education Committee of the Analytic Training Institute; approximately 600 hours of class instruction, with a standard curriculum, over a four-year period. Classes are often a few hours per week, or for a full day or two every other weekend during the academic year; this varies with the institute; and supervision once per week, with a senior analyst, on each analytic treatment case the trainee has. The minimum number of cases varies between institutes, often two to four cases. Male and female cases are required. Supervision must go on for at least a few years on one or more cases. Supervision is done in the supervisor’s office, where the trainee presents material from the analytic work that week, examines the unconscious conflicts with the supervisor, and learns, discusses, and is advised about technique.

Many psychoanalytic Training Centers in the United States have been accredited by special committees of the American Psychoanalytic Association[44] or the International Psychoanalytical Association. Because of theoretical differences, other independent institutes arose, usually founded by psychologists, who until 1987 were not permitted access to psychoanalytic training institutes of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Currently there are between seventy-five and one hundred independent institutes in the United States. As well, other institutes are affiliated to other organizations such as the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, and the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. At most psychoanalytic institutes in the United States, qualifications for entry include a terminal degree in a mental health field, such as Ph.D., Psy.D., M.S.W., or M.D. A few institutes restrict applicants to those already holding an M.D. or Ph.D., and most institutes in Southern California confer a Ph.D. or Psy.D. in psychoanalysis upon graduation, which involves completion of the necessary requirements for the state boards that confer that doctoral degree.The first training institute in America to educate non-medical psychoanalysts was The National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis., (1978) in New York City. It was founded by the world famous analyst Theodor Reik.

Some psychoanalytic training has been set up as a post-doctoral fellowship in university settings, such as at Duke University, Yale University, New York University, Adelphi University, and Columbia University. Other psychoanalytic institutes may not be directly associated with universities, but the faculty at those institutes usually hold contemporaneous faculty positions with psychology Ph.D. programs and/or with Medical School psychiatry residency programs.

The International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) is the world’s primary accrediting and regulatory body for psychoanalysis. Their mission is to assure the continued vigour and development of psychoanalysis for the benefit of psychoanalytic patients. It works in partnership with its 70 constituent organizations in 33 countries to support 11,500 members. In the US, there are 77 psychoanalytical organizations, institutes associations in the United States, which are spread across the states of America. The American Psychoanalytic Association (APSaA) has 38 affiliated societies, which have ten or more active members who practice in a given geographical area. The aims of the APSaA and other psychoanalytical organizations are: provide ongoing educational opportunities for its members, stimulate the development and research of psychoanalysis, provide training and organize conferences. There are eight affiliated study groups in the USA (two of them are in Latin America). A study group is the first level of integration of a psychoanalytical body within the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA), followed by a provisional society and finally a member society.

The Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association (APA) was established in the early 1980s by several psychologists. Until the establishment of the Division of Psychoanalysis, psychologists who had trained in independent institutes had no national organization. The Division of Psychoanalysis now has approximately 4,000 members and approximately thirty local chapters in the United States. The Division of Psychoanalysis holds two annual meetings/conferences and offers continuing education in theory, research and clinical technique, as do their affiliated local chapters. The European Psychoanalytical Federation (EPF) is the scientific organization that consolidates all European psychoanalytic societies. This organization is affiliated with the IPA. In 2002 there were approximately 3900 individual members in twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen different languages. There are also twenty-five psychoanalytic societies.

The National Membership Committee for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work was also started in the mid-eighties to represent social work psychoanalysts. Founded by Crayton Rowe, MSW it included in its membership Rueben and Gertrude Blanck who were well known ego psychologists. Other notable members are Joyce Edward, Jean Sanville and Diana Siskind. Recently, NMCOP changed its name to the American Association of Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work (AAPCSW). The organization holds a bi-annual national conferences as well as numerous annual state and area meetings in 16 area chapters. These conferences provide sessions on theory, technique and research.

[edit] Psychoanalysis in Britain
The London Psychoanalytical Society was founded by Ernest Jones on 30 October 1913. With the expansion of psychoanalysis in the United Kingdom the Society was renamed the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1919. Soon after, the Institute of Psychoanalysis was established to administer the Society’s activities. These include: the training of psychoanalysts, the development of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, the provision of treatment through The London Clinic of Psychoanalysis, the publication of books in The New Library of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Ideas. The Institute of Psychoanalysis also publishes The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, maintains a library, furthers research, and holds public lectures. The Society has a Code of Ethics and an Ethical Committee. The Society, the Institute and the Clinic are all located at Byron House.

The Society is a component of the International Psychoanalytical Association, a body with members on all five continents that safeguards professional and ethical practice. The Society is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC); the BPC publishes a register of British psychoanalysts and psychoanalytical psychotherapists. All members of the British Psychoanalytical Society are required to undertake continuing professional development.

Through its work – and the work of its individual members – the British Psychoanalytical Society has made an unrivalled contribution the understanding and treatment of mental illness. Members of the Society have included Michael Balint, Wilfred Bion, John Bowlby, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, Joseph Sandler, and Donald Winnicott.

The Institute of Psychoanalysis is the foremost publisher of psychoanalytic literature. The 24-volume Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud was conceived, translated, and produced under the direction of the British Psychoanalytical Society. The Society, in conjunction with Random House, will soon publish a new, revised and expanded Standard Edition. With [The New Library of Psychoanalysis] the Institute continues to publish the books of leading theorists and practitioners. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis is published by the Institute of Psychoanalysis. Now in its 84th year, it has one of the largest circulation of any psychoanalytic journal.

[edit] Research
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Over a hundred years of case reports and studies in the journal Modern Psychoanalysis, the Psychoanalytic Quarterly, the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association have analyzed efficacy of analysis in cases of neurosis and character or personality problems. Psychoanalysis modified by object relations techniques has been shown to be effective in many cases of ingrained problems of intimacy and relationship (cf. the many books of Otto Kernberg). As a therapeutic treatment, psychoanalytic techniques may be useful in a one-session consultation.[45] Psychoanalytic treatment, in other situations, may run from about a year to many years, depending on the severity and complexity of the pathology.

Psychoanalytic theory has, from its inception, been the subject of criticism and controversy. Freud remarked on this early in his career, when other physicians in Vienna ostracized him for his findings that hysterical conversion symptoms were not limited to women. Challenges to analytic theory began with Otto Rank and Adler (turn of the 20th century), continued with behaviorists (e.g. Wolpe) into the 1940s and ’50s, and have persisted. Criticisms come from those who object to the notion that there are mechanisms, thoughts or feelings in the mind that could be unconscious. Criticisms also have been leveled against the discovery of « infantile sexuality » (the recognition that children between ages two and six imagine things about procreation). Criticisms of theory have led to variations in analytic theories, such as the work of Fairbairn, Balint, and Bowlby. In the past 30 years or so, the criticisms have centered on the issue of empirical verification,[46] in spite of many empirical, prospective research studies that have been empirically validated (e.g., See the studies of Barbara Milrod, at Cornell University Medical School, et al.[citation needed]).

Psychoanalysis has been used as a research tool into childhood development (cf. the journal The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child), and has developed into a flexible, effective treatment for certain mental disturbances.[47] In the 1960s, Freud’s early (1905) thoughts on the childhood development of female sexuality were challenged; this challenge led to major research in the 1970s and 80s, and then to a reformulation of female sexual development that corrected some of Freud’s concepts.[48] Also see the various works of Eleanor Galenson, Nancy Chodorow, Karen Horney, Francoise Dolto, Melanie Klein, Selma Fraiberg, and others. Most recently, psychoanalytic researchers who have integrated attachment theory into their work, including Alicia Lieberman, Susan Coates, and Daniel Schechter have explored the role of parental traumatization in the development of young children’s mental representations of self and others.[49]

A 2005 review of randomized controlled trials found that « psychoanalytic therapy is (1) more effective than no treatment or treatment as usual, and (2) more effective than shorter forms of psychodynamic therapy ».[50] Empirical research on the efficacy of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy has also become prominent among psychoanalytic researchers.

Research on psychodynamic treatment of some populations shows mixed results. Research by analysts such as Bertram Karon and colleagues at Michigan State University had suggested that when trained properly, psychodynamic therapists can be effective with schizophrenic patients. More recent research casts doubt on these claims. The Schizophrenia Patient Outcomes Research Team (PORT) report argues in its Recommendation 22 against the use of psychodynamic therapy in cases of schizophrenia, noting that more trials are necessary to verify its effectiveness. However, the PORT recommendation is based on the opinions of clinicians rather than on empirical data, and empirical data exist that contradict this recommendation (link to abstract).

A review of current medical literature in The Cochrane Library, (the updated abstract of which is available online) reached the conclusion that no data exist that demonstrate that psychodynamic psychotherapy is effective in treating schizophrenia. Dr. Hyman Spotnitz and the practitioners of his theory known as Modern Psychoanalysis, a specific sub-specialty, still report (2007) much success in using their enhanced version of psychoanalytic technique in the treatment of schizophrenia. Further data also suggest that psychoanalysis is not effective (and possibly even detrimental) in the treatment of sex offenders. Experiences of psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists and research into infant and child development have led to new insights. Theories have been further developed and the results of empirical research are now more integrated in the psychoanalytic theory.[51]

There are different forms of psychoanalysis and psychotherapies in which psychoanalytic thinking is practiced. Besides classical psychoanalysis there is for example psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Other examples of well known therapies which also use insights of psychoanalysis are Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT), and Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP).[51] There is also a continuing influence of psychoanalytic thinking in different settings in the mental health care.[52] To give an example: in the psychotherapeutic training in the Netherlands, psychoanalytic and system therapeutic theories, drafts, and techniques are combined and integrated. Other psychoanalytic schools include the Kleinian, Lacanian, and Winnicottian schools.

[edit] Criticism
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Both Freud and psychoanalysis have been criticized in very extreme terms.[53] Exchanges between critics and defenders of psychoanalysis have often been so heated that they have come to be characterized as the Freud Wars. Karl Popper argued that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience because its claims are not testable and cannot be refuted; that is, they are not falsifiable.[54] For example, if a client’s reaction was not consistent with the psychosexual theory then an alternate explanation would be given (e.g. defense mechanisms, reaction formation). Karl Kraus, an Austrian satirist, was the subject of a book written by noted libertarian author Thomas Szasz. The book Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus’s Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry, originally published under the name Karl Kraus and the Soul Doctors, portrayed Kraus as a harsh critic of Sigmund Freud and of psychoanalysis in general. Other commentators, such as Edward Timms, author of Karl Kraus – Apocalyptic Satirist, have argued that Kraus respected Freud, though with reservations about the application of some of his theories, and that his views were far less black-and-white than Szasz suggests.

Grünbaum argues that psychoanalytic based theories are falsifiable, but that the causal claims of psychoanalysis are unsupported by the available clinical evidence. Other schools of psychology have produced alternative methods for psychotherapy, including behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, Gestalt therapy and person-centered psychotherapy. Hans Eysenck determined that improvement was no greater than spontaneous remission.[citation needed] Between two-thirds and three-fourths of “neurotics” would recover naturally; this was no different from therapy clients. Prioleau, Murdock, Brody reviewed several therapy-outcome studies and determined that psychotherapy is not different from placebo controls.

Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, as a sociological analysis without meaning to criticize,[citation needed] claimed that the institution of psychoanalysis has become a center of power and that its confessional techniques resemble the Christian tradition.[55] Strong criticism of certain forms of psychoanalysis is offered by psychoanalytical theorists. Jacques Lacan criticized the emphasis of some American and British psychoanalytical traditions on what he has viewed as the suggestion of imaginary « causes » for symptoms, and recommended the return to Freud.[56] Together with Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari criticised the Oedipal structure.[57] Luce Irigaray criticised psychoanalysis, employing Jacques Derrida’s concept of phallogocentrism to describe the exclusion of the woman from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytical theories.[58]

Due to the wide variety of psychoanalytic theories, varying schools of psychoanalysis often internally criticize each other. One consequence is that some critics offer criticism of specific ideas present only in one or more theories, rather than in all of psychoanalysis while not rejecting other premises of psychoanalysis. Defenders of psychoanalysis argue that many critics (such as feminist critics of Freud) have attempted to offer criticisms of psychoanalysis that were in fact only criticisms of specific ideas present only in one or more theories, rather than in all of psychoanalysis. As the psychoanalytic researcher Drew Westen puts it, « Critics have typically focused on a version of psychoanalytic theory—circa 1920 at best—that few contemporary analysts find compelling. In so doing, however, they have set the terms of the public debate and have led many analysts, I believe mistakenly, down an indefensible path of trying to defend a 75 to 100-year-old version of a theory and therapy that has changed substantially since Freud laid its foundations at the turn of the century. »[59] A further consideration with respect to cost is that in circumstances when lower cost treatment is provided to the patient as the analyst is funded by the government, then psychoanalytic treatment occurs at the expense other forms of more effective treatment.[60]

Freud’s psychoanalysis was criticized by his wife, Martha. René Laforgue reported Martha Freud saying, « I must admit that if I did not realize how seriously my husband takes his treatments, I should think that psychoanalysis is a form of pornography. » To Martha there was something vulgar about psychoanalysis, and she dissociated herself from it. According to Marie Bonaparte, Martha was upset with her husband’s work and his treatment of sexuality.[61]

[edit] Charges of fascism
Deleuze and Guattari, in their 1972 work Anti-Œdipus, take the cases of Gérard Mendel, Bela Grunberger and Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, prominent members of the most respected associations (IPa), to suggest that, traditionally, psychoanalysis enthusiastically embraces a police state:[62]

“ As to those who refuse to be oedipalized in one form or another, at one end or the other in the treatment, the psychoanalyst is there to call the asylum or the police for help. The police on our side!—never did psychoanalysis better display its taste for supporting the movement of social repression, and for participating in it with enthusiasm. [...] notice of the dominant tone in the most respected associations: consider Dr. Mendel and the Drs Stéphane, the state of fury that is theirs, and their literally police-like appeal at the thought that someone might try to escape the Oedipal dragnet. Oedipus is one of those things that becomes all the more dangerous the less people believe in it; then the cops are there to replace the high priests. ”

Dr. Bela Grunberger and Dr. Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel were two psychoanalysts from the Paris section of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPa). In November 1968, disguising themselves under the pseudonym André Stéphane, they published L’univers Contestationnaire, in which they assumed that the left-wing rioters of May 68 were totalitarian stalinists, and psychoanalyzed them saying that they were affected by a sordid infantilism caught up in an Oedipal revolt against the Father.[63][64]

Notably Lacan, mentioned this book with great disdain. While Grunberger and Chasseguet-Smirgel were still disguised under the pseudonym, Lacan remarked that for sure none of the authors belonged to his school, as none would debase themselves to such low drivel.[65] The IPa analysts responded accusing the Lacan school of « intellectual terrorism ».[63] Gérard Mendel, had instead published La révolte contre le père (1968) and Pour décoloniser l’enfant (1971).

[edit] Scientific criticism
Peter Medawar, an immunologist, said in 1975 that psychoanalysis is the « most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century ».[53] Early critics of psychoanalysis believed that its theories were based too little on quantitative and experimental research, and too much on the clinical case study method. Some even accused Freud of fabrication, most famously in the case of Anna O. (Borch-Jacobsen 1996). An increasing amount of empirical research from academic psychologists and psychiatrists has begun to address this criticism. A survey of scientific research suggested that while personality traits corresponding to Freud’s oral, anal, Oedipal, and genital phases can be observed, they do not necessarily manifest as stages in the development of children. These studies also have not confirmed that such traits in adults result from childhood experiences (Fisher & Greenberg, 1977, p. 399). However, these stages should not be viewed as crucial to modern psychoanalysis. What is crucial to modern psychoanalytic theory and practice is the power of the unconscious and the transference phenomenon.

The idea of « unconscious » is contested because human behavior can be observed while human mental activity has to be inferred. However, the unconscious is now a popular topic of study in the fields of experimental and social psychology (e.g., implicit attitude measures, fMRI, and PET scans, and other indirect tests). The idea of unconscious, and the transference phenomenon, have been widely researched and, it is claimed, validated in the fields of cognitive psychology and social psychology (Westen & Gabbard 2002), though a Freudian interpretation of unconscious mental activity is not held by the majority of cognitive psychologists. Recent developments in neuroscience have resulted in one side arguing that it has provided a biological basis for unconscious emotional processing in line with psychoanalytic theory i.e., neuropsychoanalysis (Westen & Gabbard 2002), while the other side argues that such findings make psychoanalytic theory obsolete and irrelevant.

E. Fuller Torrey, writing in Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists (1986), stated that psychoanalytic theories have no more scientific basis than the theories of traditional native healers, « witchdoctors » or modern « cult » alternatives such as est.[66] Some scientists regard psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience (Cioffi, 1998). Among philosophers, Karl Popper argued that Freud’s theory of the unconscious was not falsifiable and therefore not scientific.[54] Popper did not object to the idea that some mental processes could be unconscious but to investigations of the mind that were not falsifiable. In other words, if it were possible to connect every conceivable experimental outcome with Freud’s theory of the unconscious mind, then no experiment could refute the theory. Noam Chomsky has also criticized psychoanalysis for lacking a scientific basis.[67]

Mario Bunge, an epistemologist from McGill University, Canada, says that the psychoanalysis is pseudoscience, mostly because of its lack of coherence or correspondence with other well-established branches of science, like neurology, neurophysiology and psychiatry.

Some proponents of psychoanalysis suggest that its concepts and theories are more akin to those found in the humanities than those proper to the physical and biological/medical sciences, though Freud himself tried to base his clinical formulations on a hypothetical neurophysiology of energy transformations. For example, the philosopher Paul Ricoeur argued that psychoanalysis can be considered a type of textual interpretation or hermeneutics. Like cultural critics and literary scholars, Ricoeur contended, psychoanalysts spend their time interpreting the nuances of language — the language of their patients. Ricoeur claimed that psychoanalysis emphasizes the polyvocal or many-voiced qualities of language, focusing on utterances that mean more than one thing. Ricoeur classified psychoanalysis as a hermeneutics of suspicion. By this he meant that psychoanalysis searches for deception in language, and thereby destabilizes our usual reliance on clear, obvious meanings. Supporting criticism regarding the validity of psychoanalytic therapeutic technique, numerous outcome studies have shown that its efficacy is related to the quality of the therapist, rather than the psychoanalytic school or technique or training[68], while a french 2004 report from INSERM says instead, that psychoanalysis therapy is far less effective than other psychotherapies (among which Cognitive behavioral therapy).

[edit] Theoretical criticism
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Some theoretical criticism of psychoanalysis is based on the argument that it is over simplistic and reductive, because it reduces everything to the idea that we are all driven by our sexuality and does not take into consideration other factors.[citation needed] For example: class, political ideology, ecosystem or even spirituality.[citation needed] People like the Freudo-Marxist Wilhelm Reich redress this, as does Carl Gustav Jung[citation needed] by factoring in economic and political factors (such as relationship to the means of production in the case of Reich), culture and ideas like the paranormal in the case of Jung respectively. However, there is no clean break between the theories of Freud and Jung. For example, Jung’s theories on alchemy as externalised individuation were rooted in Freud’s ideas on projection but factored in culture and spiritual teachings. Psychoanalysts have often complained about the significant lack of theoretical agreement among analysts of different schools. Many authors have attempted to integrate the various theories, with limited success. However, with the publication of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual much of this lack of cohesion has been resolved.

Jacques Derrida incorporated aspects of psychoanalytic theory into deconstruction in order to question what he called the ‘metaphysics of presence’. Freud’s insistence, in the first chapter of The Ego and the Id, that philosophers will recoil from his theory of the unconscious is clearly a forbear to Derrida’s understanding of metaphysical ’self-presence’. Derrida also turns some of these ideas against Freud, to reveal tensions and contradictions in his work. These tensions are the conditions upon which Freud’s work can operate. For example, although Freud defines religion and metaphysics as displacements of the identification with the father in the resolution of the Oedipal complex, Derrida insists in The Postcard: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond that the prominence of the father in Freud’s own analysis is itself indebted to the prominence given to the father in Western metaphysics and theology since Plato. Thus Derrida thinks that even though Freud remains within a theologico-metaphysical tradition[citation needed] of ‘phallologocentrism’, Freud nonetheless criticizes that tradition.

The purpose of Derrida’s analysis is not to refute Freud, which would only reaffirm traditional metaphysics[why?], but to reveal an undecidability at the heart of his project. This deconstruction of Freud casts doubt upon the possibility of delimiting psychoanalysis as a rigorous science. Yet it celebrates the side of Freud which emphasises the open-ended and improvisatory nature of psychoanalysis, and its methodical and ethical demand that the testimony of the analysand should be given prominence in the practice of analysis. Psychoanalysis, or at least the dominant version of it, has been denounced as patriarchal or phallocentric by some proponents of feminist theory.[citation needed] Other feminist scholars have argued that Freud opened up society to female sexuality, with French feminism based on psychoanalysis.[citation needed]

Some post-colonialists argue that psychoanalysis imposes a white, European model of human development on those without European heritage, hence they will argue Freud’s theories are a form or instrument of intellectual imperialism.

Freud’s psychology based analysis of Michelangelo’s Moses has received attention from several critics. Some critics have an appreciation for Freud’s interpretation because of the popularity of his psychoanalytical theories. Some find that his psychological approach is a unique way to analyze a piece of art. Others find his analysis flawed based on Biblical references.

[edit] References
Preconscious
Unconscious
Psychic apparatus
Id, ego, and super-ego
Libido
Drive
Transference
Countertransference
Ego defenses
Resistance
Projection

Psychoanalysis (or Freudian psychology) is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and continued by others. It is primarily devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behavior, although it can also be applied to societies. Psychoanalysis has three main components:

1.a method of investigation of the mind and the way one thinks;
2.a systematized set of theories about human behavior;
3.a method of treatment of psychological or emotional illness.[1]
Under the broad umbrella of psychoanalysis, there are at least 22 theoretical orientations regarding human mentation and development. The various approaches in treatment called « psychoanalysis » vary as much as the theories do. The term also refers to a method of studying child development.

Freudian psychoanalysis refers to a specific type of treatment in which the « analysand » (analytic patient) verbalizes thoughts, including free associations, fantasies, and dreams, from which the analyst induces the unconscious conflicts causing the patient’s symptoms and character problems, and interprets them for the patient to create insight for resolution of the problems.

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 and those involving transference onto the analyst of distorted reactions, psychoanalytic treatment can clarify how patients unconsciously are their own worst enemies: how unconscious, symbolic reactions that have been stimulated by experience are causing symptoms.
The idea of psychoanalysis was developed in Vienna in the 1890s by Sigmund Freud, a neurologist interested in finding an effective treatment for patients with neurotic or hysterical symptoms. Freud had become aware of the existence of mental processes that were not conscious as a result of his neurological consulting job at the Children’s Hospital, where he noticed that many aphasic children had no organic cause for their symptoms. He wrote a monograph about this subject.[2] In the late 1880s, Freud obtained a grant to study with Jean-Martin Charcot, the famed neurologist and syphilologist, at the Salpêtrière in Paris. Charcot had become interested in patients who had symptoms that mimicked general paresis. Freud’s first theory to explain hysterical symptoms was the so-called « seduction theory ». Since his patients under treatment with this new method « remembered » incidents of having been sexually seduced in childhood, Freud believed that they had actually been abused only to later repress those memories. This led to his publication with Dr. Breuer in 1893 of case reports of the treatment of hysteria.[3] This first theory became untenable as an explanation of all incidents of hysteria. As a result of his work with his patients, Freud learned that the majority complained of sexual problems, especially coitus interruptus as birth control. He suspected their problems stemmed from cultural restrictions on sexual expression and that their sexual wishes and fantasies had been repressed. Between this discovery of the unexpressed sexual desires and the relief of the symptoms by abreaction, Freud began to theorize that the unconscious mind had determining effects on hysterical symptoms.

His first comprehensive attempt at an explanatory theory was the then unpublished Project for a Scientific Psychology in 1895.[4] In this work Freud attempted to develop a neurophysiologic theory based on transfer of energy by the neurons in the brain in order to explain unconscious mechanisms. He abandoned the project when he came to realize that there was a complicated psychological process involved over and above neuronal activity. By 1900, Freud had discovered that dreams had symbolic significance, and generally were specific to the dreamer. Freud formulated his second psychological theory— which postulates that the unconscious has or is a « primary process » consisting of symbolic and condensed thoughts, and a « secondary process » of logical, conscious thoughts. This theory was published in his 1900 opus magnum, The Interpretation of Dreams.[5] Chapter VII was a re-working of the earlier « Project » and Freud outlined his « Topographic Theory. » In this theory, which was mostly later supplanted by the Structural Theory, unacceptable sexual wishes were repressed into the « System Unconscious, » unconscious due to society’s condemnation of premarital sexual activity, and this repression created anxiety. Freud also discovered what most of us take for granted today: that dreams were symbolic and specific to the dreamer. Often, dreams give clues to unconscious conflicts, and for this reason, Freud referred to dreams as the « royal road to the Unconscious. »

[edit] 1900–1940s
This « topographic theory » is still popular in much of Europe, although it has been superseded in much of North America.[6] In 1905, Freud published Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality[7] in which he laid out his discovery of so-called psychosexual phases: oral (ages 0–2), anal (2-4), phallic-oedipal (today called 1st genital) (3-6), latency (6-puberty), and mature genital (puberty-onward). His early formulation included the idea that because of societal restrictions, sexual wishes were repressed into an unconscious state, and that the energy of these unconscious wishes could be turned into anxiety or physical symptoms. Therefore the early treatment techniques, including hypnotism and abreaction, were designed to make the unconscious conscious in order to relieve the pressure and the apparently resulting symptoms.

In On Narcissism (1915)[8] Freud turned his attention to the subject of narcissism. Still utilizing an energic system, Freud conceptualized the question of energy directed at the self versus energy directed at others, called cathexis. By 1917, In « Mourning and Melancholia, » he suggested that certain depressions were caused by turning guilt-ridden anger on the self.[9] In 1919 in « A Child is Being Beaten » he began to address the problems of self-destructive behavior (moral masochism) and frank sexual masochism.[10] Based on his experience with depressed and self-destructive patients, and pondering the carnage of WWI, Freud became dissatisfied with considering only oral and sexual motivations for behavior. By 1920, Freud addressed the power of identification (with the leader and with other members) in groups as a motivation for behavior (Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego).[11] In that same year (1920) Freud suggested his « dual drive » theory of sexuality and aggression in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, to try to begin to explain human destructiveness.[12]

In 1923, he presented his new « structural theory » of an id, ego, and superego in a book entitled, The Ego and the Id.[13] Therein, he revised the whole theory of mental functioning, now considering that repression was only one of many defense mechanisms, and that it occurred to reduce anxiety. Note that repression, for Freud, is both a cause of anxiety and a response to anxiety. In 1926, in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, Freud laid out how intrapsychic conflict among drive and superego (wishes and guilt) caused anxiety, and how that anxiety could lead to an inhibition of mental functions, such as intellect and speech.[14]. Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety was written in response to Otto Rank, who, in 1924, published Das Trauma der Geburt (translated into English in 1929 as The Trauma of Birth), exploring how art, myth, religion, philosophy and therapy were illuminated by separation anxiety in the « phase before the development of the Oedipus complex » (p. 216). But there was no such phase in Freud’s theories. The Oedipus complex, Freud explained tirelessly, was the nucleus of the neurosis and the foundational source of all art, myth, religion, philosophy, therapy—indeed of all human culture and civilization. It was the first time that anyone in the inner circle had dared to suggest that the Oedipus complex might not be the only factor contributing to intrapsychic development

By 1936, the « Principle of Multiple Function » was clarified by Robert Waelder.[15] He widened the formulation that psychological symptoms were caused by and relieved conflict simultaneously. Moreover, symptoms (such as phobias and compulsions) each represented elements of some drive wish (sexual and/or aggressive), superego (guilt), anxiety, reality, and defenses. Also in 1936, Anna Freud, Sigmund’s famous daughter, published her seminal book, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, outlining numerous ways the mind could shut upsetting things out of consciousness.[16]

[edit] 1940s-2000s
Following the death of Freud, a new group of psychoanalysts began to explore the function of the ego. Led by Hartmann, Kris, Rappaport and Lowenstein, the group built upon understandings of the synthetic function of the ego as a mediator in psychic functioning. Hartmann in particular distinguished between autonomous ego functions (such as memory and intellect which could be secondarily affected by conflict) and synthetic functions which were a result of compromise formation. These « Ego Psychologists » of the ’50s paved a way to focus analytic work by attending to the defenses (mediated by the ego) before exploring the deeper roots to the unconscious conflicts. In addition there was burgeoning interest in child psychoanalysis. Although criticized since its inception, psychoanalysis has been used as a research tool into childhood development,[17] and has is still used to treat certain mental disturbances.[18] In the 1960s, Freud’s early thoughts on the childhood development of female sexuality were challenged; this challenge led to the development of a variety of understandings of female sexual development, many of which modified the timing and normality of several of Freud’s theories (which had been gleaned from the treatment of women with mental disturbances). Several researchers[19] followed Karen Horney’s studies of societal pressures that influence the development of women. Most contemporary North American psychoanalysts employ theories that, while based on those of Sigmund Freud, include many modifications of theory and practice developed since his death in 1939.

In the 2000s there are approximately 35 training institutes for psychoanalysis in the United States accredited by the American Psychoanalytic Association [4][20] which is a component organization of the International Psychoanalytical Association, and there are over 3,000 graduated psychoanalysts practicing in the United States. The International Psychoanalytical Association accredits psychoanalytic training centers throughout the rest of the world, including countries such as Serbia, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and many others, as well as about six institutes directly in the U.S. Freud published a paper entitled The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement in 1914, German original being first published in the Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse.[21]

[edit] Theories
The predominant psychoanalytic theories can be grouped into several theoretical « schools. » Although these theoretical « schools » differ, most of them continue to stress the strong influence of unconscious elements affecting people’s mental lives. There has also been considerable work done on consolidating elements of conflicting theory (cf. the work of Theodore Dorpat, B. Killingmo, and S. Akhtar). As in all fields of healthcare, there are some persistent conflicts regarding specific causes of some syndromes, and disputes regarding the best treatment techniques. In the 2000s, psychoanalytic ideas are embedded in Western culture, especially in fields such as childcare, education, literary criticism, cultural studies, and mental health, particularly psychotherapy. Though there is a mainstream of evolved analytic ideas, there are groups who follow the precepts of one or more of the later theoreticians. Psychoanalytic ideas also play roles in some types of literary analysis such as Archetypal literary criticism.

[edit] Topographic theory
Topographic theory was first described by Freud in « The Interpretation of Dreams » (1900)[22][23] The theory posits that the mental apparatus can be divided in to the systems Conscious, Pre-conscious and Unconscious. These systems are not anatomical structures of the brain but, rather, mental processes. Although Freud retained this theory throughout his life he largely replaced it with the Structural theory. The Topographic theory remains as one of the metapsychological points of view for describing how the mind functions in classical psychoanalytic theory.

[edit] Structural theory
Structural theory divides the psyche into the id, the ego, and the super-ego. The id is present at birth as the repository of basic instincts, which Freud called « Triebe » (« drives »): unorganised and unconscious, it operates merely on the ‘pleasure principle’, without realism or foresight. The ego develops slowly and gradually, being concerned with mediating between the urgings of the id and the realities of the external world; it thus operates on the ‘reality principle’. The super-ego is held to be the part of the ego in which self-observation, self-criticism and other reflective and judgemental faculties develop. The ego and the super-ego are both partly conscious and partly unconscious.

[edit] Ego psychology
Ego psychology was initially suggested by Freud in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926). The theory was refined by Hartmann, Loewenstein, and Kris in a series of papers and books from 1939 through the late 1960s. Leo Bellak was a later contributor. This series of constructs, paralleling some of the later developments of cognitive theory, includes the notions of autonomous ego functions: mental functions not dependent, at least in origin, on intrapsychic conflict. Such functions include: sensory perception, motor control, symbolic thought, logical thought, speech, abstraction, integration (synthesis), orientation, concentration, judgment about danger, reality testing, adaptive ability, executive decision-making, hygiene, and self-preservation. Freud noted that inhibition is one method that the mind may utilize to interfere with any of these functions in order to avoid painful emotions. Hartmann (1950s) pointed out that there may be delays or deficits in such functions.

Frosch (1964) described differences in those people who demonstrated damage to their relationship to reality, but who seemed able to test it. Deficits in the capacity to organize thought are sometimes referred to as blocking or loose associations (Bleuler), and are characteristic of the schizophrenias. Deficits in abstraction ability and self-preservation also suggest psychosis in adults. Deficits in orientation and sensorium are often indicative of a medical illness affecting the brain (and therefore, autonomous ego functions). Deficits in certain ego functions are routinely found in severely sexually or physically abused children, where powerful effects generated throughout childhood seem to have eroded some functional development.

Ego strengths, later described by Kernberg (1975), include the capacities to control oral, sexual, and destructive impulses; to tolerate painful affects without falling apart; and to prevent the eruption into consciousness of bizarre symbolic fantasy. Synthetic functions, in contrast to autonomous functions, arise from the development of the ego and serve the purpose of managing conflictual processes. Defenses are synthetic functions that protect the conscious mind from awareness of forbidden impulses and thoughts. One purpose of ego psychology has been to emphasize that some mental functions can be considered to be basic, rather than derivatives of wishes, affects, or defenses. However, autonomous ego functions can be secondarily affected because of unconscious conflict. For example, a patient may have an hysterical amnesia (memory being an autonomous function) because of intrapsychic conflict (wishing not to remember because it is too painful).

Taken together, the above theories present a group of metapsychological assumptions. Therefore, the inclusive group of the different classical theories provides a cross-sectional view of human mentation. There are six « points of view », five described by Freud and a sixth added by Hartmann. Unconscious processes can therefore be evaluated from each of these six points of view. The « points of view » are: 1. Topographic 2. Dynamic (the theory of conflict) 3. Economic (the theory of energy flow) 4. Structural 5. Genetic (propositions concerning origin and development of psychological functions) and 6. Adaptational (psychological phenomena as it relates to the external world).[24]

[edit] Modern conflict theory
A variation of ego psychology, termed « modern conflict theory », is more broadly an update and revision of structural theory (Freud, 1923, 1926); it does away with some of structural theory’s more arcane features, such as where repressed thoughts are stored. Modern conflict theory looks at how emotional symptoms and character traits are complex solutions to mental conflict.[25] It dispenses with the concepts of a fixed id, ego and superego, and instead posits conscious and unconscious conflict among wishes (dependent, controlling, sexual, and aggressive), guilt and shame, emotions (especially anxiety and depressive affect), and defensive operations that shut off from consciousness some aspect of the others. Moreover, healthy functioning (adaptive) is also determined, to a great extent, by resolutions of conflict.

A major objective of modern conflict-theory psychoanalysis is to change the balance of conflict in a patient by making aspects of the less adaptive solutions (also called « compromise formations ») conscious so that they can be rethought, and more adaptive solutions found. Current theoreticians following Brenner’s many suggestions (see especially Brenner’s 1982 book, The Mind in Conflict) include Sandor Abend, MD (Abend, Porder, & Willick, (1983), Borderline Patients: Clinical Perspectives), Jacob Arlow (Arlow and Brenner (1964), Psychoanalytic Concepts and the Structural Theory), and Jerome Blackman (2003), 101 Defenses: How the Mind Shields Itself).

[edit] Object relations theory
Object relations theory attempts to explain vicissitudes of human relationships through a study of how internal representations of self and of others are structured. The clinical symptoms that suggest object relations problems (typically developmental delays throughout life) include disturbances in an individual’s capacity to feel warmth, empathy, trust, sense of security, identity stability, consistent emotional closeness, and stability in relationships with chosen other human beings. (It is not suggested that one should trust everyone, for example). Concepts regarding internal representations (also sometimes termed, « introjects, » « self and object representations, » or « internalizations of self and other ») although often attributed to Melanie Klein, were actually first mentioned by Sigmund Freud in his early concepts of drive theory (1905, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality). Freud’s 1917 paper « Mourning and Melancholia », for example, hypothesized that unresolved grief was caused by the survivor’s internalized image of the deceased becoming fused with that of the survivor, and then the survivor shifting unacceptable anger toward the deceased onto the now complex self image.

Vamik Volkan, in « Linking Objects and Linking Phenomena, » expanded on Freud’s thoughts on this, describing the syndromes of « Established pathological mourning » vs. « reactive depression » based on similar dynamics. Melanie Klein’s hypotheses regarding internalizations during the first year of life, leading to paranoid and depressive positions, were later challenged by Rene Spitz (e.g., The First Year of Life, 1965), who divided the first year of life into a coenesthetic phase of the first six months, and then a diacritic phase for the second six months. Margaret Mahler (Mahler, Fine, and Bergman (1975), « The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant ») and her group, first in New York, then in Philadelphia, described distinct phases and subphases of child development leading to « separation-individuation » during the first three years of life, stressing the importance of constancy of parental figures, in the face of the child’s destructive aggression, to the child’s internalizations, stability of affect management, and ability to develop healthy autonomy.

Later developers of the theory of self and object constancy as it affects adult psychiatric problems such as psychosis and borderline states have been John Frosch, Otto Kernberg, and Salman Akhtar. Peter Blos described (1960, in a book called On Adolescence) how similar separation-individuation struggles occur during adolescence, of course with a different outcome from the first three years of life: the teen usually, eventually, leaves the parents’ house (this varies with the culture). During adolescence, Erik Erikson (1950–1960s) described the « identity crisis, » that involves identity-diffusion anxiety. In order for an adult to be able to experience « Warm-ETHICS » (warmth, empathy, trust, holding environment (Winnicott), identity, closeness, and stability) in relationships (see Blackman (2003), 101 Defenses: How the Mind Shields Itself), the teenager must resolve the problems with identity and redevelop self and object constancy.

[edit] Self psychology
Self psychology emphasizes the development of a stable and integrated sense of self through empathic contacts with other humans, primary significant others conceived of as « selfobjects. » Selfobjects meet the developing self’s needs for mirroring, idealization, and twinship, and thereby strengthen the developing self. The process of treatment proceeds through « transmuting internalizations » in which the patient gradually internalizes the selfobject functions provided by the therapist. Self psychology was proposed originally by Heinz Kohut, and has been further developed by Arnold Goldberg, Frank Lachmann, Paul and Anna Ornstein, Marian Tolpin, and others.

[edit] Jacques Lacan/Lacanian psychoanalysis
Lacanian psychoanalysis integrates psychoanalysis with semiotics and Hegelian philosophy, and is practiced throughout the world. It is especially popular in France and Latin America. Lacanian psychoanalysis is a departure from the traditional British and American psychoanalysis, which is predominantly Ego psychology. Lacan frequently used the phrase « retourner à Freud » in his seminars and writings meaning « back to Freud » as he claimed that his theories were an extension of Freud’s own, contrary to those of Anna Freud, the Ego Psychology, object relations and « self » theories and also claims the necessity of reading Freud’s complete works, not only a part of them. Lacan’s first major contributions concern the « mirror stage », the Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic, and the claim that « the unconscious is structured as a language ».[26]

Though a major influence on psychoanalysis in France and parts of Latin America, Lacan and his ideas have had little to no impact on psychoanalysis or psychotherapy in the English-speaking world.[27]

[edit] Interpersonal psychoanalysis
Interpersonal psychoanalysis accents the nuances of interpersonal interactions, particularly how individuals protect themselves from anxiety by establishing collusive interactions with others, and the relevance of actual experiences with other persons developmentally (e.g. family and peers) as well as in the present. This is contrasted with the primacy of intrapsychic forces, as in classical psychoanalysis. Interpersonal theory was first introduced by Harry Stack Sullivan, MD, and developed further by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, Clara Thompson, Erich Fromm, and others who contributed to the founding of the William Alanson White Institute and Interpersonal Psychoanalysis in general.

[edit] Culturalist psychoanalysts
Main article: Culturalist psychoanalysts
Some psychoanalysts have been labeled culturalist, because of the prominence they gave on culture for the genesis of behavior.[28] Among others, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, Harry Stack Sullivan, have been called culturalist psychoanalysts.[28] They were famously in conflict with orthodox psychoanalysts.[29]

[edit] Relational psychoanalysis
Relational psychoanalysis combines interpersonal psychoanalysis with object-relations theory and with Inter-subjective theory as critical for mental health, was introduced by Stephen Mitchell.[30] Relational psychoanalysis emphasizes how the individual’s personality is shaped by both real and imagined relationships with others, and how these relationship patterns are re-enacted in the interactions between analyst and patient. Fonagy and Target, in London, have propounded their view of the necessity of helping certain detached, isolated patients, develop the capacity for « mentalization » associated with thinking about relationships and themselves.

[edit] Interpersonal-Relational psychoanalysis
The term interpersonal-relational psychoanalysis is often used as a professional identification. Psychoanalysts under this broader umbrella debate about what precisely are the differences between the two schools, without any current clear consensus.

[edit] Intersubjective psychoanalysis
The term « intersubjectivity » was introduced in psychoanalysis by George E. Atwood and Robert Stolorow (1984). Intersubjective approaches emphasize how both personality development and the therapeutic process are influenced by the interrelationship between the patient’s subjective perspective and that of others. The authors of the interpersonal-relational and intersubjective approaches: Otto Rank, Heinz Kohut, Stephen A. Mitchell, Jessica Benjamin, Bernard Brandchaft, J. Fosshage, Donna M.Orange, Arnold « Arnie » Mindell, Thomas Ogden, Owen Renik, Irwin Z. Hoffman, Harold Searles, Colwyn Trewarthen, Edgar A. Levenson, Jay R. Greenberg, Edward R. Ritvo, Beatrice Beebe, Frank M. Lachmann, Herbert Rosenfeld and Daniel Stern.

[edit] Modern psychoanalysis
« Modern psychoanalysis » is a term coined by Hyman Spotnitz and his colleagues to describe a body of theoretical and clinical work undertaken from the 1950s onwards, with the aim of extending Freud’s theories so as to make them applicable to the full spectrum of emotional disorders. Interventions based on this approach are primarily intended to provide an emotional-maturational communication to the patient, rather than to promote intellectual insight.

[edit] Micropsychoanalysis
Micropsychoanalysis has, as Freudian psychoanalysis, the free association technique as its cornerstone. However, micropsychoanalysis complements the practice of classic Freudian psychoanalysis and supplements and enriches some theoretical concepts developed by Freud.[31] The main distintive characteristics of micropsychoanalysis are: average duration of sessions three hours, the rate of sessions is at least five per week and the study of memorabilia belonging to the analysand: personal and family pictures, [32] the making of the analysand’s Genealogical tree, the drawings of childhood houses and the study of family and love letters. The aim of these technical innovations is to facilitate the labour of free association and the establishment of a bridge with reality.[33] A micropsychoanalysis can be completed in about one year if working uninterruptedly or in about three years if working in installments of 6–9 weeks every year.[34] In the theoretical aspect, Fanti reworked the Freudian metapsychology by introducing the concepts of energy and void.[35] He also introduced the idea of the existence of different levels in the structures of the psyche put forward by Freud. For example, the unconscious and preconscious-conscious systems would comprise different levels of internal structure. According to the micropsychoanalytical model, instincts (trieb) surge from the energy, specifically from the tensional difference between energy and void.[36] A basic form of micropsychoanalysis was first conceived in the 1950s by Swiss psychiatrist Silvio Fanti [37][38] and developed systematically by himself and his collaborators, Pierre Codoni and Daniel Lysek, from the 1970s. Micropsychoanalysis is popular in France, Switzerland and Italy.

[edit] Psychopathology (mental disturbances)
[edit] Adult patients
The various psychoses involve deficits in the autonomous ego functions (see above) 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.

In patients whose autonomous ego functions are more intact, but who still show problems with object relations, the diagnosis often falls into the category known as « borderline. » Borderline patients also show deficits, often in controlling impulses, affects, or fantasies – but their ability to test reality remains more or less intact. Adults who do not experience guilt and shame, and who indulge in criminal behavior, are usually diagnosed as psychopaths, or, using DSM-IV-TR, antisocial personality disorder.

Panic, phobias, conversions, obsessions, compulsions and depressions (analysts call these « neurotic symptoms ») are not usually caused by deficits in functions. Instead, they are caused by intrapsychic conflicts. The conflicts are generally among sexual and hostile-aggressive wishes, guilt and shame, and reality factors. The conflicts may be conscious or unconscious, but create anxiety, depressive affect, and anger. Finally, the various elements are managed by defensive operations – essentially shut-off brain mechanisms that make people unaware of that element of conflict. « Repression » is the term given to the mechanism that shuts thoughts out of consciousness. « Isolation of affect » is the term used for the mechanism that shuts sensations out of consciousness. Neurotic symptoms may occur with or without deficits in ego functions, object relations, and ego strengths. Therefore, it is not uncommon to encounter obsessive-compulsive schizophrenics, panic patients who also suffer with borderline personality disorder, etc.

This section above is partial to ego psychoanalytic theory « autonomous ego functions. » As the « autonomous ego functions » theory is only a theory, it may yet be proven incorrect.

[edit] Childhood origins
Freudian theories point out that adult problems can be traced to unresolved conflicts from certain phases of childhood and adolescence. Freud, based on the data gathered from his patients early in his career, suspected that neurotic disturbances occurred when children were sexually abused in childhood (the so-called seduction theory). Later, Freud came to believe that, although child abuse occurs, not all neurotic symptoms were associated with this. He realized that neurotic people often had unconscious conflicts that involved incestuous fantasies deriving from different stages of development. He found the stage from about three to six years of age (preschool years, today called the « first genital stage ») to be filled with fantasies of having romantic relationships with both parents. Although arguments were generated in early 20th-century Vienna about whether adult seduction of children was the basis of neurotic illness, there is virtually no argument about this problem in the 21st century.

Many psychoanalysts who work with children have studied the actual effects of child abuse, which include ego and object relations deficits and severe neurotic conflicts. Much research has been done on these types of trauma in childhood, and the adult sequelae of those. On the other hand, many adults with symptom neuroses and character pathology have no history of childhood sexual or physical abuse. In studying the childhood factors that start neurotic symptom development, Freud found a constellation of factors that, for literary reasons, he termed the Oedipus complex (based on the play by Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, where the protagonist unwittingly kills his father Laius and marries his mother Jocasta). The shorthand term, « oedipal, » (later explicated by Joseph Sandler in « On the Concept Superego » (1960) and modified by Charles Brenner in « The Mind in Conflict » (1982)) refers to the powerful attachments that children make to their parents in the preschool years. These attachments involve fantasies of sexual relationships with either (or both) parent, and, therefore, competitive fantasies toward either (or both) parents. Humberto Nagera (1975) has been particularly helpful in clarifying many of the complexities of the child through these years.

The terms « positive » and « negative » oedipal conflicts have been attached to the heterosexual and homosexual aspects, respectively. Both seem to occur in development of most children. Eventually, the developing child’s concessions to reality (that they will neither marry one parent nor eliminate the other) lead to identifications with parental values. These identifications generally create a new set of mental operations regarding values and guilt, subsumed under the term « superego. » Besides superego development, children « resolve » their preschool oedipal conflicts through channeling wishes into something their parents approve of (« sublimation ») and the development, during the school-age years (« latency ») of age-appropriate obsessive-compulsive defensive maneuvers (rules, repetitive games).

[edit] Treatment
Using the various analytic theories to assess mental problems, several particular constellations of problems are particularly suited for analytic techniques (see below) whereas other problems respond better to medicines and different interpersonal interventions. To be treated with psychoanalysis, whatever the presenting problem, the person requesting help must demonstrate a desire to start an analysis. The person wishing to start an analysis must have some capacity for speech and communication. As well, they need to be able to have trust and empathy within the psychoanalytic session. Potential patients must undergo a preliminary stage of treatment to assess their amenability to psychoanalysis, at that time, and also to enable the analyst to form a working psychological model which the analyst will use to direct the treatment. Psychoanalysts mainly work with neurosis and hysteria in particular, however adapted forms of psychoanalysis are used in working with schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis. Finally, if a prospective patient is severely suicidal a longer preliminary stage may be employed, sometimes with sessions which have a twenty minute break in the middle. There are modifications of techniques due to the radically individualistic nature of each person’s analysis.

The most common problems treatable with psychoanalysis include: phobias, conversions, compulsions, obsessions, anxiety attacks, depressions, sexual dysfunctions, a wide variety of relationship problems (such as dating and marital strife), and a wide variety of character problems (for example, painful shyness, meanness, obnoxiousness, workaholism, hyperseductiveness, hyperemotionality, hyperfastidiousness). The fact that many of such patients also demonstrate deficits above makes diagnosis and treatment selection difficult.

Analytical organizations such as the International Psychoanalytic Association,[39] The American Psychoanalytic Association,[40] and the European Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy,[41] have established procedures and models for the indication and practice of psychoanalytical therapy for trainees in analysis. The match between the analyst and the patient can be viewed as another contributing factor for the indication and contraindication for psychoanalytic treatment. The analyst decides whether the patient is suitable for psychoanalysis. This decision made by the analyst, besides made on the usual indications and pathology, is also based to a certain degree by the « fit » between analyst and patient. A person’s suitability for analysis at any particular time is based on their desire to know something about where their illness has come from. Someone who is not suitable for analysis expresses no desire to know more about the root causes of their illness. An evaluation may include one or more other analysts’ independent opinions and will include discussion of the patient’s financial situation and insurances.

[edit] Techniques
The basic method of psychoanalysis is interpretation of the patient’s unconscious conflicts that are interfering with current-day functioning – conflicts that are causing painful symptoms such as phobias, anxiety, depression, and compulsions. Strachey (1936) stressed that figuring out ways the patient distorted perceptions about the analyst led to understanding what may have been forgotten (also see Freud’s paper « Repeating, Remembering, and Working Through »). In particular, unconscious hostile feelings toward the analyst could be found in symbolic, negative reactions to what Robert Langs later called the « frame » of the therapy – the setup that included times of the sessions, payment of fees, and necessity of talking. In patients who made mistakes, forgot, or showed other peculiarities regarding time, fees, and talking, the analyst can usually find various unconscious « resistances » to the flow of thoughts (sometimes called free association).

Freud’s patients would lie on this couch during psychoanalysisWhen the patient reclines on a couch with the analyst out of view, the patient tends to remember more, experience more resistance and transference, and be able to reorganize thoughts after the development of insight – through the interpretive work of the analyst. Although fantasy life can be understood through the examination of dreams, masturbation fantasies (cf. Marcus, I. and Francis, J. (1975), Masturbation from Infancy to Senescence) are also important. The analyst is interested in how the patient reacts to and avoids such fantasies (cf. Paul Gray (1994), The Ego and the Analysis of Defense).[42] Various memories of early life are generally distorted – Freud called them « screen memories » – and in any case, very early experiences (before age two) – can not be remembered (See the child studies of Eleanor Galenson on « evocative memory »).

[edit] Variations in technique
There is what is known among psychoanalysts as « classical technique, » although Freud throughout his writings deviated from this considerably, depending on the problems of any given patient. Classical technique was summarized by Allan Compton, MD, as comprising instructions (telling the patient to try to say what’s on their mind, including interferences); exploration (asking questions); and clarification (rephrasing and summarizing what the patient has been describing). As well, the analyst can also use confrontation to bringing an aspect of functioning, usually a defense, to the patient’s attention. The analyst then uses a variety of interpretation methods, such as dynamic interpretation (explaining how being too nice guards against guilt, e.g. – defense vs. affect); genetic interpretation (explaining how a past event is influencing the present); resistance interpretation (showing the patient how they are avoiding their problems); transference interpretation (showing the patient ways old conflicts arise in current relationships, including that with the analyst); or dream interpretation (obtaining the patient’s thoughts about their dreams and connecting this with their current problems). Analysts can also use reconstruction to estimate what may have happened in the past that created some current issue.

These techniques are primarily based on conflict theory (see above). As object relations theory evolved, grass supplemented by the work of Bowlby, Ainsorth, and Beebe, techniques with patients who had more severe problems with basic trust (Erikson, 1950) and a history of maternal deprivation (see the works of Augusta Alpert) led to new techniques with adults. These have sometimes been called interpersonal, intersubjective (cf. Stolorow), relational, or corrective object relations techniques. These techniques include expressing an empathic attunement to the patient or warmth; exposing a bit of the analyst’s personal life or attitudes to the patient; allowing the patient autonomy in the form of disagreement with the analyst (cf. I.H. Paul, Letters to Simon.); and explaining the motivations of others which the patient misperceives. Ego psychological concepts of deficit in functioning led to refinements in supportive therapy. These techniques are particularly applicable to psychotic and near-psychotic (cf., Eric Marcus, « Psychosis and Near-psychosis ») patients. These supportive therapy techniques include discussions of reality; encouragement to stay alive (including hospitalization); psychotropic medicines to relieve overwhelming depressive affect or overwhelming fantasies (hallucinations and delusions); and advice about the meanings of things (to counter abstraction failures).

The notion of the « silent analyst » has been criticized. Actually, the analyst listens using Arlow’s approach as set out in « The Genesis of Interpretation »), using active intervention to interpret resistances, defenses creating pathology, and fantasies. Silence is not a technique of psychoanalysis (also see the studies and opinion papers of Owen Renik, MD). « Analytic Neutrality » is a concept that does not mean the analyst is silent. It refers to the analyst’s position of not taking sides in the internal struggles of the patient. For example, if a patient feels guilty, the analyst might explore what the patient has been doing or thinking that causes the guilt, but not reassure the patient not to feel guilty. The analyst might also explore the identifications with parents and others that led to the guilt.

Interpersonal-Relational psychoanalysts emphasize the notion that it is impossible to be neutral. Sullivan introduced the term « participant-observer » to indicate the analyst inevitably interacts with the analysand, and suggested the detailed inquiry as an alternative to interpretation. The detailed inquiry involves noting where the analysand is leaving out important elements of an account and noting when the story is obfuscated, and asking careful questions to open up the dialogue.

[edit] Group therapy and play therapy
Although single-client sessions remain the norm, psychoanalytic theory has been used to develop other types of psychological treatment. Psychoanalytic group therapy was pioneered by Trigant Burrow, Joseph Pratt, Paul F. Schilder, Samuel R. Slavson, Harry Stack Sullivan, and Wolfe. Child-centered counseling for parents was instituted early in analytic history by Freud, and was later further developed by Irwin Marcus, Edith Schulhofer, and Gilbert Kliman. Psychoanalytically based couples therapy has been promulgated and explicated by Fred Sander, MD. Techniques and tools developed in the 2000s have made psychoanalysis available to patients who were not treatable by earlier techniques. This meant that the analytic situation was modified so that it would be more suitable and more likely to be helpful for these patients. M.N. Eagle (2007) believes that psychoanalysis cannot be a self-contained discipline but instead must be open to influence from and integration with findings and theory from other disciplines.[43]

Psychoanalytic constructs have been adapted for use with children with treatments such as play therapy, art therapy, and storytelling. Throughout her career, from the 1920s through the 1970s, Anna Freud adapted psychoanalysis for children through play. This is still used today for children, especially those who are preadolescent (see Leon Hoffman, New York Psychoanalytic Institute Center for Children). Using toys and games, children are able to demonstrate, symbolically, their fears, fantasies, and defenses; although not identical, this technique, in children, is analogous to the aim of free association in adults. Psychoanalytic play therapy allows the child and analyst to understand children’s conflicts, particularly defenses such as disobedience and withdrawal, that have been guarding against various unpleasant feelings and hostile wishes. In art therapy, the counselor may have a child draw a portrait and then tell a story about the portrait. The counselor watches for recurring themes—regardless of whether it is with art or toys.

[edit] Cultural variations
Psychoanalysis can be adapted to different cultures, as long as the therapist or counseling understands the client’s culture. For example, Tori and Blimes found that defense mechanisms were valid in a normative sample of 2,624 Thais. The use of certain defense mechanisms was related to cultural values. For example Thais value calmness and collectiveness (because of Buddhist beliefs), so they were low on regressive emotionality. Psychoanalysis also applies because Freud used techniques that allowed him to get the subjective perceptions of his patients. He takes an objective approach by not facing his clients during his talk therapy sessions. He met with his patients wherever they were, such as when he used free association — where clients would say whatever came to mind without self-censorship. His treatments had little to no structure for most cultures, especially Asian cultures. Therefore, it is more likely that Freudian constructs will be used in structured therapy (Thompson, et al., 2004). In addition, Corey postulates that it will be necessary for a therapist to help clients develop a cultural identity as well as an ego identity.

[edit] Cost and length of treatment
The cost to the patient of psychoanalytic treatment ranges widely from place to place and between practitioners. Low-fee analysis is often available in a psychoanalytic training clinic and graduate schools. Otherwise, the fee set by each analyst varies with the analyst’s training and experience. Since, in most locations in the United States, unlike in Ontario and Germany, classical analysis (which usually requires sessions three to five times per week) is not covered by health insurance, many analysts may negotiate their fees with patients whom they feel they can help, but who have financial difficulties. The modifications of analysis, which include dynamic therapy, brief therapies, and certain types of group therapy (cf. Slavson, S. R., A Textbook in Analytic Group Therapy), are carried out on a less frequent basis – usually once, twice, or three times a week – and usually the patient sits facing the therapist.

Many studies have also been done on briefer « dynamic » treatments; these are more expedient to measure, and shed light on the therapeutic process to some extent. Brief Relational Therapy (BRT), Brief Psychodynamic Therapy (BPT), and Time-Limited Dynamic Therapy (TLDP) limit treatment to 20-30 sessions. On average, classical analysis may last 5.7 years, but for phobias and depressions uncomplicated by ego deficits or object relations deficits, analysis may run for a shorter period of time. Longer analyses are indicated for those with more serious disturbances in object relations, more symptoms, and more ingrained character pathology (such as obnoxiousness, severe passivity, or heinous procrastination).

[edit] Training and research
Psychoanalytic training in the United States, in most locations, involves personal analytic treatment for the trainee, conducted confidentially, with no report to the Education Committee of the Analytic Training Institute; approximately 600 hours of class instruction, with a standard curriculum, over a four-year period. Classes are often a few hours per week, or for a full day or two every other weekend during the academic year; this varies with the institute; and supervision once per week, with a senior analyst, on each analytic treatment case the trainee has. The minimum number of cases varies between institutes, often two to four cases. Male and female cases are required. Supervision must go on for at least a few years on one or more cases. Supervision is done in the supervisor’s office, where the trainee presents material from the analytic work that week, examines the unconscious conflicts with the supervisor, and learns, discusses, and is advised about technique.

Many psychoanalytic Training Centers in the United States have been accredited by special committees of the American Psychoanalytic Association[44] or the International Psychoanalytical Association. Because of theoretical differences, other independent institutes arose, usually founded by psychologists, who until 1987 were not permitted access to psychoanalytic training institutes of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Currently there are between seventy-five and one hundred independent institutes in the United States. As well, other institutes are affiliated to other organizations such as the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, and the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. At most psychoanalytic institutes in the United States, qualifications for entry include a terminal degree in a mental health field, such as Ph.D., Psy.D., M.S.W., or M.D. A few institutes restrict applicants to those already holding an M.D. or Ph.D., and most institutes in Southern California confer a Ph.D. or Psy.D. in psychoanalysis upon graduation, which involves completion of the necessary requirements for the state boards that confer that doctoral degree.The first training institute in America to educate non-medical psychoanalysts was The National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis., (1978) in New York City. It was founded by the world famous analyst Theodor Reik.

Some psychoanalytic training has been set up as a post-doctoral fellowship in university settings, such as at Duke University, Yale University, New York University, Adelphi University, and Columbia University. Other psychoanalytic institutes may not be directly associated with universities, but the faculty at those institutes usually hold contemporaneous faculty positions with psychology Ph.D. programs and/or with Medical School psychiatry residency programs.

The International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) is the world’s primary accrediting and regulatory body for psychoanalysis. Their mission is to assure the continued vigour and development of psychoanalysis for the benefit of psychoanalytic patients. It works in partnership with its 70 constituent organizations in 33 countries to support 11,500 members. In the US, there are 77 psychoanalytical organizations, institutes associations in the United States, which are spread across the states of America. The American Psychoanalytic Association (APSaA) has 38 affiliated societies, which have ten or more active members who practice in a given geographical area. The aims of the APSaA and other psychoanalytical organizations are: provide ongoing educational opportunities for its members, stimulate the development and research of psychoanalysis, provide training and organize conferences. There are eight affiliated study groups in the USA (two of them are in Latin America). A study group is the first level of integration of a psychoanalytical body within the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA), followed by a provisional society and finally a member society.

The Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association (APA) was established in the early 1980s by several psychologists. Until the establishment of the Division of Psychoanalysis, psychologists who had trained in independent institutes had no national organization. The Division of Psychoanalysis now has approximately 4,000 members and approximately thirty local chapters in the United States. The Division of Psychoanalysis holds two annual meetings/conferences and offers continuing education in theory, research and clinical technique, as do their affiliated local chapters. The European Psychoanalytical Federation (EPF) is the scientific organization that consolidates all European psychoanalytic societies. This organization is affiliated with the IPA. In 2002 there were approximately 3900 individual members in twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen different languages. There are also twenty-five psychoanalytic societies.

The National Membership Committee for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work was also started in the mid-eighties to represent social work psychoanalysts. Founded by Crayton Rowe, MSW it included in its membership Rueben and Gertrude Blanck who were well known ego psychologists. Other notable members are Joyce Edward, Jean Sanville and Diana Siskind. Recently, NMCOP changed its name to the American Association of Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work (AAPCSW). The organization holds a bi-annual national conferences as well as numerous annual state and area meetings in 16 area chapters. These conferences provide sessions on theory, technique and research.

[edit] Psychoanalysis in Britain
The London Psychoanalytical Society was founded by Ernest Jones on 30 October 1913. With the expansion of psychoanalysis in the United Kingdom the Society was renamed the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1919. Soon after, the Institute of Psychoanalysis was established to administer the Society’s activities. These include: the training of psychoanalysts, the development of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, the provision of treatment through The London Clinic of Psychoanalysis, the publication of books in The New Library of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Ideas. The Institute of Psychoanalysis also publishes The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, maintains a library, furthers research, and holds public lectures. The Society has a Code of Ethics and an Ethical Committee. The Society, the Institute and the Clinic are all located at Byron House.

The Society is a component of the International Psychoanalytical Association, a body with members on all five continents that safeguards professional and ethical practice. The Society is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC); the BPC publishes a register of British psychoanalysts and psychoanalytical psychotherapists. All members of the British Psychoanalytical Society are required to undertake continuing professional development.

Through its work – and the work of its individual members – the British Psychoanalytical Society has made an unrivalled contribution the understanding and treatment of mental illness. Members of the Society have included Michael Balint, Wilfred Bion, John Bowlby, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, Joseph Sandler, and Donald Winnicott.

The Institute of Psychoanalysis is the foremost publisher of psychoanalytic literature. The 24-volume Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud was conceived, translated, and produced under the direction of the British Psychoanalytical Society. The Society, in conjunction with Random House, will soon publish a new, revised and expanded Standard Edition. With [The New Library of Psychoanalysis] the Institute continues to publish the books of leading theorists and practitioners. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis is published by the Institute of Psychoanalysis. Now in its 84th year, it has one of the largest circulation of any psychoanalytic journal.

[edit] Research
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Over a hundred years of case reports and studies in the journal Modern Psychoanalysis, the Psychoanalytic Quarterly, the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association have analyzed efficacy of analysis in cases of neurosis and character or personality problems. Psychoanalysis modified by object relations techniques has been shown to be effective in many cases of ingrained problems of intimacy and relationship (cf. the many books of Otto Kernberg). As a therapeutic treatment, psychoanalytic techniques may be useful in a one-session consultation.[45] Psychoanalytic treatment, in other situations, may run from about a year to many years, depending on the severity and complexity of the pathology.

Psychoanalytic theory has, from its inception, been the subject of criticism and controversy. Freud remarked on this early in his career, when other physicians in Vienna ostracized him for his findings that hysterical conversion symptoms were not limited to women. Challenges to analytic theory began with Otto Rank and Adler (turn of the 20th century), continued with behaviorists (e.g. Wolpe) into the 1940s and ’50s, and have persisted. Criticisms come from those who object to the notion that there are mechanisms, thoughts or feelings in the mind that could be unconscious. Criticisms also have been leveled against the discovery of « infantile sexuality » (the recognition that children between ages two and six imagine things about procreation). Criticisms of theory have led to variations in analytic theories, such as the work of Fairbairn, Balint, and Bowlby. In the past 30 years or so, the criticisms have centered on the issue of empirical verification,[46] in spite of many empirical, prospective research studies that have been empirically validated (e.g., See the studies of Barbara Milrod, at Cornell University Medical School, et al.[citation needed]).

Psychoanalysis has been used as a research tool into childhood development (cf. the journal The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child), and has developed into a flexible, effective treatment for certain mental disturbances.[47] In the 1960s, Freud’s early (1905) thoughts on the childhood development of female sexuality were challenged; this challenge led to major research in the 1970s and 80s, and then to a reformulation of female sexual development that corrected some of Freud’s concepts.[48] Also see the various works of Eleanor Galenson, Nancy Chodorow, Karen Horney, Francoise Dolto, Melanie Klein, Selma Fraiberg, and others. Most recently, psychoanalytic researchers who have integrated attachment theory into their work, including Alicia Lieberman, Susan Coates, and Daniel Schechter have explored the role of parental traumatization in the development of young children’s mental representations of self and others.[49]

A 2005 review of randomized controlled trials found that « psychoanalytic therapy is (1) more effective than no treatment or treatment as usual, and (2) more effective than shorter forms of psychodynamic therapy ».[50] Empirical research on the efficacy of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy has also become prominent among psychoanalytic researchers.

Research on psychodynamic treatment of some populations shows mixed results. Research by analysts such as Bertram Karon and colleagues at Michigan State University had suggested that when trained properly, psychodynamic therapists can be effective with schizophrenic patients. More recent research casts doubt on these claims. The Schizophrenia Patient Outcomes Research Team (PORT) report argues in its Recommendation 22 against the use of psychodynamic therapy in cases of schizophrenia, noting that more trials are necessary to verify its effectiveness. However, the PORT recommendation is based on the opinions of clinicians rather than on empirical data, and empirical data exist that contradict this recommendation (link to abstract).

A review of current medical literature in The Cochrane Library, (the updated abstract of which is available online) reached the conclusion that no data exist that demonstrate that psychodynamic psychotherapy is effective in treating schizophrenia. Dr. Hyman Spotnitz and the practitioners of his theory known as Modern Psychoanalysis, a specific sub-specialty, still report (2007) much success in using their enhanced version of psychoanalytic technique in the treatment of schizophrenia. Further data also suggest that psychoanalysis is not effective (and possibly even detrimental) in the treatment of sex offenders. Experiences of psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists and research into infant and child development have led to new insights. Theories have been further developed and the results of empirical research are now more integrated in the psychoanalytic theory.[51]

There are different forms of psychoanalysis and psychotherapies in which psychoanalytic thinking is practiced. Besides classical psychoanalysis there is for example psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Other examples of well known therapies which also use insights of psychoanalysis are Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT), and Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP).[51] There is also a continuing influence of psychoanalytic thinking in different settings in the mental health care.[52] To give an example: in the psychotherapeutic training in the Netherlands, psychoanalytic and system therapeutic theories, drafts, and techniques are combined and integrated. Other psychoanalytic schools include the Kleinian, Lacanian, and Winnicottian schools.

[edit] Criticism
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Both Freud and psychoanalysis have been criticized in very extreme terms.[53] Exchanges between critics and defenders of psychoanalysis have often been so heated that they have come to be characterized as the Freud Wars. Karl Popper argued that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience because its claims are not testable and cannot be refuted; that is, they are not falsifiable.[54] For example, if a client’s reaction was not consistent with the psychosexual theory then an alternate explanation would be given (e.g. defense mechanisms, reaction formation). Karl Kraus, an Austrian satirist, was the subject of a book written by noted libertarian author Thomas Szasz. The book Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus’s Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry, originally published under the name Karl Kraus and the Soul Doctors, portrayed Kraus as a harsh critic of Sigmund Freud and of psychoanalysis in general. Other commentators, such as Edward Timms, author of Karl Kraus – Apocalyptic Satirist, have argued that Kraus respected Freud, though with reservations about the application of some of his theories, and that his views were far less black-and-white than Szasz suggests.

Grünbaum argues that psychoanalytic based theories are falsifiable, but that the causal claims of psychoanalysis are unsupported by the available clinical evidence. Other schools of psychology have produced alternative methods for psychotherapy, including behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, Gestalt therapy and person-centered psychotherapy. Hans Eysenck determined that improvement was no greater than spontaneous remission.[citation needed] Between two-thirds and three-fourths of “neurotics” would recover naturally; this was no different from therapy clients. Prioleau, Murdock, Brody reviewed several therapy-outcome studies and determined that psychotherapy is not different from placebo controls.

Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, as a sociological analysis without meaning to criticize,[citation needed] claimed that the institution of psychoanalysis has become a center of power and that its confessional techniques resemble the Christian tradition.[55] Strong criticism of certain forms of psychoanalysis is offered by psychoanalytical theorists. Jacques Lacan criticized the emphasis of some American and British psychoanalytical traditions on what he has viewed as the suggestion of imaginary « causes » for symptoms, and recommended the return to Freud.[56] Together with Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari criticised the Oedipal structure.[57] Luce Irigaray criticised psychoanalysis, employing Jacques Derrida’s concept of phallogocentrism to describe the exclusion of the woman from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytical theories.[58]

Due to the wide variety of psychoanalytic theories, varying schools of psychoanalysis often internally criticize each other. One consequence is that some critics offer criticism of specific ideas present only in one or more theories, rather than in all of psychoanalysis while not rejecting other premises of psychoanalysis. Defenders of psychoanalysis argue that many critics (such as feminist critics of Freud) have attempted to offer criticisms of psychoanalysis that were in fact only criticisms of specific ideas present only in one or more theories, rather than in all of psychoanalysis. As the psychoanalytic researcher Drew Westen puts it, « Critics have typically focused on a version of psychoanalytic theory—circa 1920 at best—that few contemporary analysts find compelling. In so doing, however, they have set the terms of the public debate and have led many analysts, I believe mistakenly, down an indefensible path of trying to defend a 75 to 100-year-old version of a theory and therapy that has changed substantially since Freud laid its foundations at the turn of the century. »[59] A further consideration with respect to cost is that in circumstances when lower cost treatment is provided to the patient as the analyst is funded by the government, then psychoanalytic treatment occurs at the expense other forms of more effective treatment.[60]

Freud’s psychoanalysis was criticized by his wife, Martha. René Laforgue reported Martha Freud saying, « I must admit that if I did not realize how seriously my husband takes his treatments, I should think that psychoanalysis is a form of pornography. » To Martha there was something vulgar about psychoanalysis, and she dissociated herself from it. According to Marie Bonaparte, Martha was upset with her husband’s work and his treatment of sexuality.[61]

[edit] Charges of fascism
Deleuze and Guattari, in their 1972 work Anti-Œdipus, take the cases of Gérard Mendel, Bela Grunberger and Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, prominent members of the most respected associations (IPa), to suggest that, traditionally, psychoanalysis enthusiastically embraces a police state:[62]

“ As to those who refuse to be oedipalized in one form or another, at one end or the other in the treatment, the psychoanalyst is there to call the asylum or the police for help. The police on our side!—never did psychoanalysis better display its taste for supporting the movement of social repression, and for participating in it with enthusiasm. [...] notice of the dominant tone in the most respected associations: consider Dr. Mendel and the Drs Stéphane, the state of fury that is theirs, and their literally police-like appeal at the thought that someone might try to escape the Oedipal dragnet. Oedipus is one of those things that becomes all the more dangerous the less people believe in it; then the cops are there to replace the high priests. ”

Dr. Bela Grunberger and Dr. Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel were two psychoanalysts from the Paris section of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPa). In November 1968, disguising themselves under the pseudonym André Stéphane, they published L’univers Contestationnaire, in which they assumed that the left-wing rioters of May 68 were totalitarian stalinists, and psychoanalyzed them saying that they were affected by a sordid infantilism caught up in an Oedipal revolt against the Father.[63][64]

Notably Lacan, mentioned this book with great disdain. While Grunberger and Chasseguet-Smirgel were still disguised under the pseudonym, Lacan remarked that for sure none of the authors belonged to his school, as none would debase themselves to such low drivel.[65] The IPa analysts responded accusing the Lacan school of « intellectual terrorism ».[63] Gérard Mendel, had instead published La révolte contre le père (1968) and Pour décoloniser l’enfant (1971).

[edit] Scientific criticism
Peter Medawar, an immunologist, said in 1975 that psychoanalysis is the « most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century ».[53] Early critics of psychoanalysis believed that its theories were based too little on quantitative and experimental research, and too much on the clinical case study method. Some even accused Freud of fabrication, most famously in the case of Anna O. (Borch-Jacobsen 1996). An increasing amount of empirical research from academic psychologists and psychiatrists has begun to address this criticism. A survey of scientific research suggested that while personality traits corresponding to Freud’s oral, anal, Oedipal, and genital phases can be observed, they do not necessarily manifest as stages in the development of children. These studies also have not confirmed that such traits in adults result from childhood experiences (Fisher & Greenberg, 1977, p. 399). However, these stages should not be viewed as crucial to modern psychoanalysis. What is crucial to modern psychoanalytic theory and practice is the power of the unconscious and the transference phenomenon.

The idea of « unconscious » is contested because human behavior can be observed while human mental activity has to be inferred. However, the unconscious is now a popular topic of study in the fields of experimental and social psychology (e.g., implicit attitude measures, fMRI, and PET scans, and other indirect tests). The idea of unconscious, and the transference phenomenon, have been widely researched and, it is claimed, validated in the fields of cognitive psychology and social psychology (Westen & Gabbard 2002), though a Freudian interpretation of unconscious mental activity is not held by the majority of cognitive psychologists. Recent developments in neuroscience have resulted in one side arguing that it has provided a biological basis for unconscious emotional processing in line with psychoanalytic theory i.e., neuropsychoanalysis (Westen & Gabbard 2002), while the other side argues that such findings make psychoanalytic theory obsolete and irrelevant.

E. Fuller Torrey, writing in Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists (1986), stated that psychoanalytic theories have no more scientific basis than the theories of traditional native healers, « witchdoctors » or modern « cult » alternatives such as est.[66] Some scientists regard psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience (Cioffi, 1998). Among philosophers, Karl Popper argued that Freud’s theory of the unconscious was not falsifiable and therefore not scientific.[54] Popper did not object to the idea that some mental processes could be unconscious but to investigations of the mind that were not falsifiable. In other words, if it were possible to connect every conceivable experimental outcome with Freud’s theory of the unconscious mind, then no experiment could refute the theory. Noam Chomsky has also criticized psychoanalysis for lacking a scientific basis.[67]

Mario Bunge, an epistemologist from McGill University, Canada, says that the psychoanalysis is pseudoscience, mostly because of its lack of coherence or correspondence with other well-established branches of science, like neurology, neurophysiology and psychiatry.

Some proponents of psychoanalysis suggest that its concepts and theories are more akin to those found in the humanities than those proper to the physical and biological/medical sciences, though Freud himself tried to base his clinical formulations on a hypothetical neurophysiology of energy transformations. For example, the philosopher Paul Ricoeur argued that psychoanalysis can be considered a type of textual interpretation or hermeneutics. Like cultural critics and literary scholars, Ricoeur contended, psychoanalysts spend their time interpreting the nuances of language — the language of their patients. Ricoeur claimed that psychoanalysis emphasizes the polyvocal or many-voiced qualities of language, focusing on utterances that mean more than one thing. Ricoeur classified psychoanalysis as a hermeneutics of suspicion. By this he meant that psychoanalysis searches for deception in language, and thereby destabilizes our usual reliance on clear, obvious meanings. Supporting criticism regarding the validity of psychoanalytic therapeutic technique, numerous outcome studies have shown that its efficacy is related to the quality of the therapist, rather than the psychoanalytic school or technique or training[68], while a french 2004 report from INSERM says instead, that psychoanalysis therapy is far less effective than other psychotherapies (among which Cognitive behavioral therapy).

[edit] Theoretical criticism
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Some theoretical criticism of psychoanalysis is based on the argument that it is over simplistic and reductive, because it reduces everything to the idea that we are all driven by our sexuality and does not take into consideration other factors.[citation needed] For example: class, political ideology, ecosystem or even spirituality.[citation needed] People like the Freudo-Marxist Wilhelm Reich redress this, as does Carl Gustav Jung[citation needed] by factoring in economic and political factors (such as relationship to the means of production in the case of Reich), culture and ideas like the paranormal in the case of Jung respectively. However, there is no clean break between the theories of Freud and Jung. For example, Jung’s theories on alchemy as externalised individuation were rooted in Freud’s ideas on projection but factored in culture and spiritual teachings. Psychoanalysts have often complained about the significant lack of theoretical agreement among analysts of different schools. Many authors have attempted to integrate the various theories, with limited success. However, with the publication of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual much of this lack of cohesion has been resolved.

Jacques Derrida incorporated aspects of psychoanalytic theory into deconstruction in order to question what he called the ‘metaphysics of presence’. Freud’s insistence, in the first chapter of The Ego and the Id, that philosophers will recoil from his theory of the unconscious is clearly a forbear to Derrida’s understanding of metaphysical ’self-presence’. Derrida also turns some of these ideas against Freud, to reveal tensions and contradictions in his work. These tensions are the conditions upon which Freud’s work can operate. For example, although Freud defines religion and metaphysics as displacements of the identification with the father in the resolution of the Oedipal complex, Derrida insists in The Postcard: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond that the prominence of the father in Freud’s own analysis is itself indebted to the prominence given to the father in Western metaphysics and theology since Plato. Thus Derrida thinks that even though Freud remains within a theologico-metaphysical traditio of ‘phallologocentrism’, Freud nonetheless criticizes that tradition.

The purpose of Derrida’s analysis is not to refute Freud, which would only reaffirm traditional metaphysics[why?], but to reveal an undecidability at the heart of his project. This deconstruction of Freud casts doubt upon the possibility of delimiting psychoanalysis as a rigorous science. Yet it celebrates the side of Freud which emphasises the open-ended and improvisatory nature of psychoanalysis, and its methodical and ethical demand that the testimony of the analysand should be given prominence in the practice of analysis. Psychoanalysis, or at least the dominant version of it, has been denounced as patriarchal or phallocentric by some proponents of feminist theory.[citation needed] Other feminist scholars have argued that Freud opened up society to female sexuality, with French feminism based on psychoanalysis.

Some post-colonialists argue that psychoanalysis imposes a white, European model of human development on those without European heritage, hence they will argue Freud’s theories are a form or instrument of intellectual imperialism.

Freud’s psychology based analysis of Michelangelo’s Moses has received attention from several critics. Some critics have an appreciation for Freud’s interpretation because of the popularity of his psychoanalytical theories. Some find that his psychological approach is a unique way to analyze a piece of art.

Dis maman…

Jeudi 3 juin 2010

Sigmund Freud (2)

Dimanche 2 mai 2010

Sigmund Freud

Dimanche 2 mai 2010

Carl Gustav Jung

Dimanche 2 mai 2010

Le complexe d’Electre

Dimanche 2 mai 2010

Complexe d’Électre

Le complexe d’Électre est un concept théorique rattaché à la première topique de Freud, destiné à expliquer le développement psychique de la petite fille. Il fait pendant au concept de complexe d’Œdipe chez le jeune garçon. Carl Gustav Jung l’a nommé « complexe d’Électre » en référence à l’héroïne grecque qui vengea son père Agamemnon en assassinant sa propre mère, Clytemnestre. Freud désignait ce concept par « complexe d’Œdipe féminin » dans ses propres écrits.

Selon Freud, le développement psychique de l’enfant se déroule selon trois stades successifs . Au cours du premier stade, dit « oral », l’enfant prend son plaisir par l’acte de manger. Le sein de la mère est alors perçu par l’enfant comme objet de plaisir. Lors du second stade, dit « sadique-anal », l’enfant prend conscience de sa puissance sur le monde. Enfin, lors du troisième stade, dit « œdipien » ou « phallique », se développe, chez le garçon, le complexe d’Œdipe : les pulsions d’attirance à l’égard de la mère se renforcent, l’enfant devient de plus en plus exigeant et envahissant, ce qui provoque l’opposition du père, lequel cristallise ensuite sur lui des pulsions hostiles de la part du garçon. À l’adolescence, ce complexe provoque l’attirance du garçon pour les filles, et son rejet des autres garçons, ce qui conditionne une sexualité de type hétérosexuelle.

La difficulté saute cependant aux yeux : s’il en allait exactement de la même manière chez la petite fille, alors l’adolescente devrait ressentir une attirance sexuelle pour les autres filles et un rejet des garçons ; or, ce n’est pas ce qu’on observe ; aussi Freud fut-il amené à aménager le concept de complexe d’Œdipe pour l’adapter au cas de la fille et résoudre l’asymétrie constatée entre le développement psychique des garçons et celui des filles.

Pour Freud, il est clair que la mère « nourricière » est le premier objet d’amour chez la fille comme chez le garçon ; il est ‘clair également que la fille, comme le garçon, découvre vers trois ans que les parents entretiennent des relations sexuelles dont l’enfant se sent exclu ; il est enfin tout aussi clair que la fille, comme le garçon, cherche alors à s’interposer entre ses parents.

Toutefois, à ce moment, le processus chez la fille se dissocie nécessairement du processus chez le garçon. En effet, lors de cette première phase, dite « phallique » du complexe d’Œdipe, le garçon peut s’interposer entre ses parents en entrant ouvertement en conflit avec son père, ce qu’il réalise en exhibant son pénis ; le père, qui sanctionne ce comportement, se présente alors comme une figure de l’autorité liée à la peur de la castration.

De son côté, la fille, privée de pénis, ne peut entrer ouvertement en conflit avec le père. Aussi chez elle la castration n’est-elle pas ressentie comme la peur de perdre son pénis, mais comme la frustration de ne pas en avoir. Elle peut alors, selon Freud, réagir de trois façons :

rejet pur et simple de la sexualité ;
rejet de la castration et donc de son destin de future femme ;
choix du père comme objet.
Plus précisément, dans ce dernier cas, la fille commencerait à ressentir une attirance pour son père — attirance toute calculée, s’entend, puisqu’il s’agit de lui soutirer un pénis pour se procurer celui qui lui manque. Cette attirance pour le père peut donc s’élaborer sans entamer la pulsion sexuelle pour la mère « nourricière », même si celle-ci prend, temporairement du moins, figure de rivale dans la quête du pénis paternel.

L’explication proposée par Freud permet ainsi de comprendre comment la fille, malgré le même « point de départ » que le garçon (les pulsions sexuelles envers la mère), en vient à ressentir des pulsions sexuelles pour son père et des pulsions hostiles pour sa mère (situation contraire à celle du garçon).

S’il y a même point de départ dans le désir de la mère, la castration divise garçon et fille quant au début du complexe. La castration est, pour le garçon, la sortie du complexe d’Œdipe : le père pose pour le petit d’homme cette menace par excellence, et cet enfant doit abandonner la convoitise de la mère. La castration met fin au complexe d’Œdipe. Tandis que le complexe d’Électre, à proprement parler, débute par la castration – c’est la castration qui, comme on l’a vu, introduit le désir du père. Cette fonction opposée de la castration quant au complexe chez le garçon et la fille n’est pas sans conséquences sur le développement psychique ultérieur.

Comme le complexe d’Œdipe pour le garçon, le complexe d’Électre trouve à se résoudre au moment de l’adolescence, lorsque la fille surmonte la castration, qu’elle commence à élaborer une personnalité propre empruntant à la fois à son père et à sa mère, et qu’elle se met à rechercher d’autres partenaires sexuels que ses parents. Le désir d’enfant, à l’âge adulte, ne serait alors chez la femme qu’une simple sublimation du désir de pénis ressenti dans l’enfance.

Cependant, si le complexe d’Œdipe permet l’expression radicale de l’attirance à l’égard de la mère et d’hostilité à l’égard du père, au contraire, dans le complexe d’Électre, cette expression se teinte toujours d’ambivalence. La fille est attirée par son père, mais seulement dans la mesure où elle cherche à lui soutirer un pénis ; elle ressent une rivalité à l’égard de sa mère, mais continue par ailleurs à s’identifier à elle. Aussi Freud pensait-il que le complexe d’Électre ne se résolvait jamais complètement chez la fille et que ses effets s’en ressentaient dans sa vie mentale de femme.

Nous renvoyons d’abord aux critiques adressées contre le complexe d’Œdipe, et qui s’avèrent également valables pour le complexe d’Électre.

En outre, le complexe d’Électre autorise trois critiques autonomes. D’abord, Freud prête aux petites filles de son époque une connaissance de l’anatomie humaine qu’elles n’avaient probablement pas. Nombre de jeunes femmes de son époque arrivaient au mariage dans la plus grande ignorance des choses du sexe. Beaucoup ignoraient ce qu’était un pénis, n’ayant jamais vu d’homme nu, surtout pas leur père ou leur frère. On ne comprend donc guère comment une « envie de pénis » peut se développer chez quelqu’un qui ignore jusqu’à l’existence même du pénis. De nos jours, cette explication de Freud reste donc teintée de mystère.

(Note concernant l’origine de l’envie de pénis : Il se pourrait que simplement, ce désir soit programmé génétiquement. Il suffit de songer aux pulsions, par exemple, chez le chien, lesquelles, sans aucune expérience sexuelle, mènent l’animal à procréer. Il y a donc, dans l’espèce même, une prédisposition génétique à créer cette forme de désir, il en est peut être de même chez l’être humain.)

Ensuite, la notion de complexe d’Électre a entraîné de vives critiques de la part du mouvement féministe. L’explication de Freud s’élabore, en effet, à partir d’un « calque » établi à partir du développement psychique du garçon, exactement comme si la fille était une sorte de garçon « bizarre », « anormal ». Freud, d’ailleurs, ne dissimule nullement son point de vue puisque, à l’en croire, la fille se considérerait elle-même comme un « garçon privé de pénis ». À aucun moment Freud ne s’aperçoit que la féminité pourrait s’analyser comme une réalité positive, plutôt que comme une négativité, un défaut par rapport à un garçon supposé meilleur (puisque lui ne « manque » de rien). La conclusion freudienne selon laquelle le complexe d’Électre ne se résoudrait jamais complètement chez la femme adulte implique que la femme serait beaucoup moins stable psychologiquement que l’homme, hystérique ou caractérielle.

Enfin, le mouvement gay et lesbien conteste fortement les positions de Freud. À l’en croire, en effet, la pérennité du complexe d’Électre chez la femme laisserait entendre que l’homosexualité féminine serait « normale », tandis que l’homosexualité masculine constituerait un symptôme de trouble psychique dû à un complexe d’Œdipe « inversé » non résolu.

On peut proposer aussi une version plus ouverte de l’hypothèse freudienne : plutôt que de partir du savoir supposé des petits concernant l’anatomie sexuelle , on pose la situation infantile initiale comme marquée par un désir amoureux incestueux d’avec la mère, désir exclusif et jaloux par nature. Or tout indique que toute société exige de ses adultes l’intégration de l’interdit de l’inceste, sous peine de sanctions graves. Ce serait alors ce passage du vécu incestueux fondateur au vécu de la loi d’interdit de l’inceste qui déterminerait les crises œdipiennes et leurs conséquences propres à chaque histoire de chacun, y compris dans les choix d’orientation sexuelle adulte. Le mode d’expression de Freud équivaudrait à celui d’un précurseur daté. Mais il reste que la notion de phallus, et que dans la pensée inconsciente il serait le seul organe sexuel représenté car pouvant être castré, conserve toute sa valeur : ce qui nous ouvre à la notion moderne du lien avec l’Autre, le moyen du lien étant le phallus (nommé ainsi sur la base de ce qu’est déjà le sexuel pour la mère), ce qui dans le monde du langage qui est celui de l’être humain se nomme « la copule ». L’enfant fille ou garçon ne cesserait pas alors de chercher ce qui ferait copule avec sa mère : la langue, le caca, etc. Mais aussi toute une série de comportements signifiants pour les parents. Le phallus est alors le symbole universel privilégié car central dans le lien sexuel de l’un à l’autre et dans la production des enfants. Représenté par de multiples avatars, il est utilisé aussi bien par les hommes que par les femmes, et est donc en fait indépendant du choix d’orientation sexuelle de la personne, et ne présuppose aucune supériorité autre que celle des préjugés infantiles. Et la pensée inconsciente du désir se mobiliserait sans cesse autour de l’affirmation ou de la « castration » de ce qui fait « liant » avec l’Autre (en général d’abord la mère biologique) et qui est révélé par un tiers (en général le père biologique). C’est l’orientation lacanienne qui permet aujourd’hui cette lecture modernisée de Freud.

L’existence de transsexuels masculins vers féminins, plus nombreux que dans l’autre sens, contredit également la conception selon laquelle toute femme désire un pénis.

La Femme  » psychanalytique »….

Jeudi 1 avril 2010

SEXUALITE FEMININE

La perplexité que l’on éprouve lorsque l’on se trouve face à la complexité du problème de la sexualité féminine tient, sans doute, à la diversité des approches possibles.
Les réflexions anatomique et génétique sur la différenciation sexuelle, les recherches sur l’embryon, portant sur l’origine d’une sexualité humaine, les découvertes de la physiologie à l’égard du sexe chromosomique et ses différences d’avec le sexe hormonal, la multitude des études faites de la biochimie à la médecine, produisent constamment des théories nouvelles, qui, à côté des élaborations conceptuelles issues des sciences humaines, tentent d’apporter une explication aux mystères de la vie pulsionnelle: la bisexualité de l’embryon n’a-t-elle pas son pendant sur le versant psychologique ?
L’hormone mâle ne serait-elle pas déterminante pour nous éclairer sur les origines du comportement sexuel masculin?
Les transformations du métabolisme féminin ne seraient-elles pas à la source de son attirance pour des objectifs passifs et du refoulement de ses instincts agressifs?
La psychanalyse s’intéresse à toutes les questions se rattachant à ce problème: l’énigme du désir chez la femme, la nécessité d’être désirée, l’impact de la différence anatomique des sexes sur le psychisme féminin…
Mais concernant les multiples conceptions médicales, leurs liens, on observe que la fonction sexuelle ne prend de sens que par rapport au Désir qui déclenche la pulsion. Pourtant Sigmund Freud, à l’issue de ses travaux, confiera que l’élucidation de la problématique de la sexualité féminine reste: « une tâche irréalisable »
La raison qu’il donne est la suivante:
 » Lorsque nous avons étudié les premières configurations psychiques que prend la vie sexuelle chez l’enfant, nous avons pris pour objet l’enfant de sexe masculin. Nous pensions qu’il doit en aller de même pour les petites filles, quoique, d’une certaine manière, différemment. On ne pouvait alors clairement constater où se révèle cette différence au cours du développement. »
Par ailleurs, les psychanalystes étaient le plus souvent des hommes, mais il apparaît, d’après les analystes femmes, qu’il y aurait quelque chose d’impossible à interpréter, concernant la femme.
Parmi elles, nous pouvons évoquer les travaux de Lou Andreas-Salomé, psychanalyste, intellectuelle, qui réalisa un parcours téméraire au sein de la modernité européenne: femme originale intégrée aux milieux littéraires cosmopolites, elle aura sa place, dès 1911, dans l’avènement de la psychanalyse.
L’histoire de cette femme est aussi celle d’une émancipation féminine.
Dans ses oeuvres littéraires, elle réaménage les traumatismes du passé, et va toujours dans le sens d’une indépendance.
Elle réussit à vivre librement ses relations amoureuses et sexuelles, alors que dans son couple avec Friedrich Carl Andreas, elle s’était longtemps refusée ce plaisir charnel.
Dans sa recherche existentielle, Lou Andreas-Salomé se crée sa propre philosophie de la vie, analysant l’art, l’amour, l’érotisme, la femme ( comme porteuse de vie, de désir et d’une maternité spirituelle ) .
Elle écrira:
 » La sexualité rayonne, au-delà de l’union charnelle et de la vie donnée, dans les sphères de la création artistique et de la religion  » .
Luce Trigaray a marqué son époque, et s’est essentiellement penchée sur le problème de la Féminité et l’articulation de la différence sexuelle.
Elle dit:
« Pourtant la femme ça parle. Mais pas pareil, pas même, pas identique à soi, ni à un x quelconque. »
ou encore:
 » La femme ne peut donc pas s’entendre. Et, si tout ce qu’elle dit est de quelque manière du langage, il ne le signifie pas pour autant  » .
et enfin:
 » La femme ne parle jamais pareil. Ce qu’elle émet est fluent, fluctuant, Flouant. Et on ne l’écoute pas, sauf à y perdre le sens ( du ) propre. D’où les résistances à cette voix qui déborde le sujet « .
Une autre psychanalyste s’est interrogée sur la sexualité dite normale par rapport à une normativité, il s’agit de Joyce Mac Dougall.
On ne peut définir un être par un acte, même s’il s’agit d’un acte symptôme, car ce symptôme peut correspondre à des structures différentes « .
Cette analyste conteste le terme  » pervers  » et introduit l’idée que la sexualité perverse n’est que l’expression d’une situation intérieure où s’entrecroisent angoisses, dépression, symptômes psychosomatiques et inhibitions.
Intéressants, sont aussi les travaux de Piera Aulagnier et Nathalie Saltzmann à ce sujet.

CONCEPTIONS FREUDIENNES
D’un point de vue psychanalytique, la sexualité repose sur la libido, force pulsionnelle sexuelle.
Selon Freud, elle est indifférenciée, il n’existerait pas de « libido féminine ». Il soutient le thèse d’un « monisme sexuel phallique »jusqu’à la puberté. Le clitoris est associé au pénis en tant qu’organe érotique. La petite fille ne découvrirait le vagin que plus tard.
La phase clitoridiennes pourrait cependant marquer la femme toute sa vie.
Pour devenir une femme, selon Freud, la fillette doit traverser des expériences douloureuses, qui lui demandent une élaboration psychique intense.
C’est avant la puberté que la petite fille devra dépasser deux situations, qui lui sont propres, et que le garçon ne rencontre jamais.
Les enfants des deux sexes franchissent les premiers stades de la libido de façon sensiblement égale.
Ces stades prégénitaux, participent à l’organisation libidinale et correspondent au développement affectif de l’enfant.
Les stades oral, anal, phallique se succèdent ainsi que les zones érogènes qui leur sont associées.
Jusque-là, tout reste immature. Ces phases composent l’humain, et l’apprêtent à devenir un être géniteur.
Les zones érogènes se définissent nettement, et la masturbation clitoridienne devient préférentielle.
Mais au fur et à mesure que la féminité apparaît, le sensibilité du clitoris devrait devenir moins forte que celle du vagin.
C’est en cela que réside la première complication que la fillette doit surmonter par rapport au garçon, qui lui, prolongera cette activité sexuelle au cours de sa maturité.
La sensibilité érotique phallique du petit garçon se développera tout au long de sa vie d’homme, alors que pour devenir femme, un changement, à ce niveau, doit advenir chez la fillette.
Jacques André, psychanalyste et professeur à l’Université Paris VII, s’est lui aussi, intéressé à cette évolution.
La deuxième différence et difficulté qui se trouve sur les chemins de la fillette à destination de la féminité, est la mutation d’objet d’amour.
Le garçon ne connaîtra jamais ce bouleversement.
En effet, la mère est le premier objet d’amour, aussi bien pour le garçon que pour la petite fille.
Elle satisfait les besoins essentiels du nourrisson, avant l’Oedipe, elle est investie d’un pouvoir fabuleux.

Voici ce que Freud écrit à ce sujet:
 » Les sentiments libidinaux de la fille pour sa mère sont multiples et persistent pendant les trois stades de la sexualité infantile. Ils prennent le caractère de chacun d’eux en s’exprimant par des désirs oraux, sadiques anaux et phalliques. Ces désirs traduisent des émotions actives ou passives, et si on les rapportent à la différenciation ultérieure des sexes, on est en droit de les qualifier soit de virils, soit de féminins. En outre, étant ambivalents, ils sont à la fois tendres et agressivement hostiles. Il n’est pas facile de formuler en quoi consistent ces désirs sexuels. Le plus nettement perceptible est le désir de faire un enfant à la mère et d’en avoir un d’elle. Ces deux désirs datent de la période phallique et leur surprenante présence est prouvée, de façon formelle, dans l’observation psychanalytique. »
On parle même de fantasme de séduction par la mère, sans doute en raison des soins corporels donnés par la mère à la petite fille et qui suscitèrent les premiers émois sensuels génitaux.
La fillette doit cependant renoncer à cet attachement passionné à la mère, pour se tourner vers le père.
Cet arrachement se fait dans la douleur, souvent sous forme d’agressivité, de haine et de reproches.
Cette révolte peut parfois durer toute la vie, les reproches portent sur le manque d’amour de la mère : la mère n’a pas assez de lait pour nourrir le bébé.

D’autres fois, c’est la venue d’un autre enfant qui fait l’objet de la condamnation de la mère. La jalousie haineuse anime la petite fille, elle se sent abandonnée.
L’intensité des sentiments des enfants est sans limite, ils sont possessifs, et leur amour passionné est exclusif
En fonction des stades de la libido, les désirs sexuels de le petite fille se transforment. Malheureusement, ils ne peuvent être comblés.
Face à cette frustration des désirs non satisfaits, l’enfant développerait une agressivité à l’égard de la mère, la rendant responsable de cette frustration.
La rupture décisive se produirait à la phase phallique, au moment où la mère interdirait la masturbation à la petite fille.
Souvent la mère condamne, menace l’activité sexuelle de l’enfant qui finit par se
détacher définitivement, renonçant à cette forte fixation à la mère.
 » On pourrait penser, note Freud, que ces motifs suffisent à expliquer pourquoi la fillette se détache de la mère: la nature même de la sexualité infantile, l’excès des exigences amoureuses, l’impossibilité de satisfaire les désirs sexuels,
voilà ce qui provoque inéluctablement cette volte-face. On peut penser que ce lien est appelé à disparaître, du fait, justement, qu’il est le premier, car les investissements objectaux précoces sont toujours extrêmement ambivalents et l’amour puissant ne manque jamais de s’accompagner d’une forte tendance agressive. Les déceptions amoureuses, les renoncements seront d’autant plus sensibles à l’enfant, qu’il aura aimé avec plus de passion. Finalement l’hostilité accumulée doit l’emporter sur l’amour. On peut, aussi, nier l’ambivalence primitive, des investissements amoureux et démontrer que l’irrémédiable disparition de l’amour infantile est due à la nature particulière du rapport mère-enfant, l’éducation la plus indulgente ne pouvant qu’exercer une contrainte. Toute atteinte à sa liberté provoque, chez
l’enfant, une réaction qui se manifeste par une tendance à la révolte et à l’agression ».
Mais cette thèse ne peut être soutenue si on considère que le petit garçon connaît les mêmes sentiments hostiles et négatifs à l’égard de sa mère et reste cependant attaché à son premier objet d’amour.
C’est l’angoisse de castration qui reste l’élément spécifique chez la fille et qui agit comme facteur déterminant au détachement maternel.
Vers l’âge de 2 ou 3 ans, découvrant la différence des sexes, la petite fille en veut à sa mère de ne pas l’avoir dotée d’un pénis.
Pour le garçon, l’angoisse de castration est vécue différemment: en voyant le sexe féminin, il en arrive à penser que le pénis n’est pas forcément un élément du corps humain.
Lui reviennent à l’esprit les menaces proférées à l’époque de sa masturbation et craint la mise en actes de ces intimidations.
L’effroi éprouvé à l’idée de cette castration deviendra, à partir de ce moment-là, un ressort puissant pour le développement ultérieur du petit garçon.
Le retentissement de l’angoisse de castration pour la petite fille sera fondamental pour son évolution .

La situation n’est pas toujours facile à accepter, certaines petites filles caressent l’illusion d’avoir un jour un pénis.
Ce désir peut rester graver dans l’inconscient, ne jamais quitter la fillette devenue adulte, et la mener à entreprendre une analyse.
L’expérience de la castration représente pour la petite fille l’entrée dans la féminité, mais c’est aussi l’origine des névroses et des perversions.
A partir de la découverte de la différence des sexes plusieurs possibilités s’offrent à la fillette.
Ou bien elle s’orientera vers une féminité normale.
Ou bien elle s’engagera sur les chemins de la névrose en réagissant à la castration par l’inhibition sexuelle.
Ou bien on assistera à un changement dans son caractère, et elle développera un complexe de virilité.
Dans l’éventualité d’une féminité normale, lorsque l’enfant , à l’issue de la phase phallique, n’a pas trop endigué ses pulsions sexuelles, les transformations opérées doivent concourir à une organisation normale de la féminité.
Une poussée de passivité envahit la petite fille qui se sent, naturellement, attirée par son père.
Symboliquement, cet enfant tiendrait lieu de « penisersatz »:
On remarque que même lorsque la féminité s’est bien épanouie, ce désir de pénis survit chez la femme.
Ce désir de pénis ne correspondrait-il pas, s’interroge Freud, à  » un élément typiquement féminin ? « .
Au cours de cette période, c’est-à-dire, vers trois ans, la petite fille, découvrant son désir d’enfant et de pénis du père, va commencer à vivre l’Oedipe, éprouvant à l’égard de la mère des sentiments agressifs liés à la situation de rivalité.
Elle entre en compétition avec elle, jalouse de ce que le père lui accorde.
Elle aimerait prendre sa place pour jouir des faveurs dont son père la gratifie.
La situation Oedipienne est pour la fille l’issue d’une série d’épreuves douloureuses et d’un lent développement.
Cette phase est pour elle une sorte de répit passager.
Dans la deuxième situation, contestant l’évidence de la castration, la fillette déploie  » un complexe de virilité ».
N’abandonnant pas leur activité clitoridienne, elles prennent des attitudes de garçons et tentent de s’identifier à une mère phallique ou au père.

Freud explique, entre autre, ainsi l’origine de l’homosexualité.
Mais d’autres psychanalystes ont pu observer, dans leur pratique, que l’homosexualité n’était pas une conséquence directe du complexe de castration.
Certaines fois la fillette vit l’Oedipe avec son père, mais ne le surmonte’ pas et régresse jusqu’au complexe de virilité.
L’étude des couples homosexuels nous indique qu’ils jouent soit à la mère et l’enfant, soit au mari et à l’épouse.
Ce sont les traces laissées par la traversée de ces deux phases de l’évolution de la sexualité féminine.
Dans le troisième cas, l’enfant, souffrant d’une blessure narcissique à travers ce qu’elle peut vivre comme une « mutilation » et « une infortune singulière et privée », va d’une part abandonner le plaisir de la masturbation, refoulant certaines de ses pulsions sexuelles.
Un bouleversement intérieur violent est à l’ oeuvre, permettant à la petite fille de mener un combat contre ses penchants sexuels masturbatoires.
Du point de vue psychanalytique, on comprend fort bien les conséquences que peuvent revêtir la pratique ou l’abstinence de la masturbation précoce et le comportement des parents ceci en lien avec l’apparition d’une névrose et la formation du caractère.
L’abandon de la masturbation clitoridienne correspond au renoncement de l’activité phallique.

Finalement la petite fille prend conscience qu’elle n’est pas seule à être ainsi constituée; d’autres individus féminins, sa mère en particulier, sont ainsi faits.
Cela lui pose un problème car elle imaginait une mère phallique, toute puissante, à qui elle vouait un amour infini.
Mais cette mère tant aimée, admirée, apparaît soudain dépréciée, il lui manque quelque chose.
A ce moment-là, le garçon comme la fille, repositionnent leur désir.
Confronté au manque, l’enfant peut se trouver, parfois, dans l’incapacité de désirer l’objet, dévalorisé à ses yeux.
C’est ainsi que prennent naissance « névroses et perversions ».
Le complexe d’Oedipe et le complexe de castration sont liés différemment, suivant qu’il s’agisse de la fille ou du garçon.
Lorsque le garçon commence à éprouver du désir pour sa mère, et à vouloir éliminer son père, devenu rival, il se trouve au stade phallique.
C’est l’angoisse de castration qui va mettre un terme à ses tendances amoureuses, car il a peur de voir disparaître son pénis.
L’angoisse de castration, chez le garçon aboutit au déclin du complexe d’Oedipe.

S’identifiant à son père, le garçon va intégrer « l’interdit de l’inceste ».
Ainsi , aucune menace ne pèse plus sur son pénis.
A l’inverse, l’angoisse de castration précipite la fille dans l’Oedipe.
Le désir du pénis l’attire vers son père.
Le développement de son « surmoi » tiendra plus aux réactions extérieures, l’éducation et dépendra surtout de sa peur d’un retrait d’amour.
C’est à partir de l’Oedipe que la féminité va lentement se déployer.
Entre 6 et 9 ans, elle vivra l’acmé de la relation triangulaire Oedipienne, fantasmant sur le désir d’enfant avec le père et ses envies de meurtre à l’encontre de sa mère.
Cependant, elle essaie de lui ressembler pour séduire le père.
Ce violent conflit cessera lorsqu’elle prendra conscience d’une incompatibilité entre son vagin et le sexe de son père.
Cela produit une »angoisse de viol » à laquelle elle mettra fin en abandonnant son désir du pénis paternel.
Ses pulsions génitales sont sublimées.
Il faudra attendre la puberté, pour qu’elle se détache complètement du père, et s’intéresse à des garçons de son âge.
Au moment de la puberté, vers 10 à 12 ans, la fillette doit surmonter une étape délicate liée à l’importance de l’image chez l’adolescent.
Les seins apparaissent, le cycle menstruel s’instaure et cette phase inscrit un tournant essentiel dans l’instauration de la féminité de l’enfant.
La jeune adolescente commence à se maquiller, à se vêtir de façon parfois originale et provocatrice.
Elle désire prendre l’aspect d’une femme pour solliciter les garçons, les attirer.
En abandonnant l’illusion d’une possible relation incestueuse, la fille s’ouvrira sur le monde et commencera à entretenir une vie sociale.
Cette période, au cours de laquelle les parents sont délaissés, et ne représentent plus réellement d’intérêt pour l’adolescente, peut être ponctuée d’incidences dépressives: la jeune fille peut être en proie à  » des pulsions de mort’, avoir des idées de suicide, en adoptant, parfois, certains comportements mortifères.
C’est aussi le temps de la masturbation de la puberté émaillée de fantasmes de viol et de rapt, jusqu’au jour de la première relation sexuelle avec un garçon.
Si le premier acte sexuel se passe bien, le processus de féminité aboutira à des orgasmes de plus en plus variés et profonds: orgasmes vaginaux et plus intimement orgasmes utéro-annexiels.
La jeune fille jettera son dévolu sur un époux correspondant à son idéal narcissique: c’est-à-dire un idéal masculin qu’elle aurait voulu atteindre, dans l’enfance, et auquel elle aurait voulu ressembler.

Si la phase oedipienne n’a pas été correctement dépassée, elle s’orientera vers un homme qui représente l’image du père.
On constate donc que l’évolution affective et le choix narcissique vont jouer un rôle capital dans le choix objectal.
Le besoin d’être aimée est pour la femme plus important que le besoin d’aimer.
La femme se réalisera aussi dans la maternité.
Selon Freud, la relation mère-enfant est le lien le plus extraordinaire et le plus cristallin.
Mais , toujours selon lui, c’est dans la relation « de mère à fils »que la femme s’épanouit le mieux et puise un bonheur parfait.
Il en tire la conclusion que « le manque de pénis » est toujours à l’ oeuvre.
Si la première expérience sexuelle se déroule mal ( manque de tendresse, mauvais choix), la jeune fille peut être traumatisée, souffrir d’une blessure narcissique et vivre l’acte comme un viol.

POINTS DE VUE LACANIENS
Jacques Lacan s’est intéressé à la conception de l’évolution de la sexualité en mettant l’accent sur le désir en rapport avec le désir de l’Autre.
Il s’est beaucoup appuyé sur les travaux de Mélanie Klein concernant la relation primordiale mère-enfant.
Les études de cette psychanalyste ont apporté un éclairage différent sur les relations précoces du bébé, cannibaliques et divisées ( morcellement ), avec les objets extérieurs, partiels, des « morceaux de mère ( ses mains, ses seins, les objets qu’elle manipule et nomme) ».
Mélanie Klein introduit l’idée de deux catégories d’objets: « les bons » et les « mauvais ».
Selon elle, l’angoisse de séparation et de perte d’objet s’inscrit dans sa conception des relations objectales et de sa théorie de l’angoisse.
Pour elle, l’angoisse est une réaction directe au travail interne de la pulsion de mort.
Il y aurait, selon Mélanie Klein, une angoisse persécutrice de l’ordre de la position paranoïde-schinoïde et une angoisse qui appartiendrait à la posture dépressive.
H.Segal ( 1979) précise:
 » L’angoisse fondamentale postulée par Freud concernant la perte d’objet pouvait être vécue selon Mélanie Klein sur l’un ou l’autre mode ou bien encore selon une quelconque combinaison des deux. »

Par exemple, l’objet est méchant et attaque, il persécute et est mauvais, car il se présente sous un mode paranoïde, et il reste bon, sur le mode dépressif, car on a peur, on éprouve de l’angoisse à l’idée de perdre le bon objet.
La première angoisse chez l’enfant décrite par Mélanie Klein, est la peur d’être anéanti par la pulsion de mort, elle est donc projetée à l’extérieur, d’où la notion de fantasme du mauvais objet et le bon objet protecteur est introjecté .
Les frustrations sont vécues comme des persécutions, les bonnes expériences se fondent dans le fantasme d’un objet idéal.
Dans ces chaos intérieurs, si le nourrisson est bien intégré, il peut avoir le souvenir d’un amour stable pour la mère aimée, qu’il se met à haïr quand elle disparaît.
La perte de l’objet reste cruelle, mais si l’amour concernant l’objet total, cela aura moins de conséquences sur le nourrisson.
En effet, les fluctuations entre l’angoisse de persécution, lorsque la haine est plus forte, et l’angoisse dépressive, lorsque l’amour l’emporte sur la haine, seront déterminantes.
Car la position dépressive marque un point capital entre le moment de fixation des psychoses et celui des névroses.
Selon Lacan, le monde est l’endroit où se localise le désir de l’Autre (lieu de
l’Inconscient, en opposition à l’autre qui correspond au terme de congénère, auquel on est confronté dans le cadre d’une relation interpersonnelle).

L’enfant devra faire l’expérience de la localisation de ce désir de l’Autre.
L’extérieur ne pouvant se restreindre à un site « bon » ou « mauvais ».
Le sein, objet partiel, initialement objet de besoin, va se transformer en GL parenthèse symbolique « de la mère réelle qui entoure le nourrisson et recèle dans son être tous les objets qu’elle peut contenir.
La mère est le premier objet symbolisé.
Suivant qu’elle apparaisse ou disparaisse ( le Fort/Da de Freud) elle se transformera, pour le sujet, non plus en objet de besoin, mais en objet d’amour.
Ainsi, la présence ou l’absence de la mère inscrira notamment l’enfant en tant que sujet désiré ou non, la question de la satisfaction des besoins reste en second plan.
C’est de la mère qu’émane ce Désir, si vital à l’enfant.
Ce qui est fondamental pour l’enfant, pour la petit fille, c’est ce qu’elle désire.
Elle va repérer son Désir dans celui de la mère ( l’Autre).
Le Désir se réfléchit, renvoie dans l’Autre, à un désir autre.
Au cours de la relation initiale mère-enfant, le nourrisson est très réceptif et décrypte les signaux provenant de la mère.
Le phallus, comme signifiant du désir se manifeste du côté de la mère.

Ceci induit un fond nouveau et occulte, un élément tiers.
La mère désire le Phallus, symbole de toutes les qualités attachées à l’organe masculin.
 » Car il faut un symbole à cette marge qui sépare tout être humain
de son désir. Le symbole du manque, nécessaire pour introduire son désir dans le signifiant, est le phallus. ( W. Granoff et F. Perrier).
C’est au moment où la petite fille va reconnaître son désir dans celui de sa mère que son évolution affective va s’enclencher.
Au cours de cette évolution, on distinguera trois phases capitales qui seront à l’origine du processus de mutation: on partira de l’imaginaire pour accéder au symbolique et à la réalité.
Dans un premier temps, le phallus, signifiant du désir, chemine conjointement dans la relation imaginaire avec la mère comme objet basique.
Ensuite, il prend sa place dans la triade symbolique avec la père, référence suprême, la mère s’en remettant à lui, en lui transmettant son rôle.
Ces profonds bouleversements sont couronnés par le complexe d’Oedipe.
Mais la fonction du Phallus ne peut être alors évaluée qu’au regard du complexe de castration.
Pour comprendre le processus de féminisation, il convient de faire un petit retour en arrière, au moment où la mère représente tout pour l’enfant et incarne le Désir.

Désir à la mère vont d’abord tenter de s’identifier à cet objet qui capte tant la mère et essayer d ‘être le Phallus.
Dans cette évolution psycho-affective, le désir maternel est déterminant. Il déclenche l’identification.
Cependant, l’enfant s’aperçoit rapidement que cela ne suffit pas, la mère n’est pas comblée, elle continue à désirer ailleurs.
L’enfant sent qu’il y a « autre chose « .
C’est alors que surgit dans son esprit l’idée d’un tiers auquel la mère se réfère et qui canalise son désir.
Il s’agit là du concept du « Nom du Père ».
L’enfant ne se découvre pas encore en tant qu’homme, mais plus au sens d’une  » référence à une Loi ».
Dans sa quête, l’enfant rencontre l’Autre, qui le renvoie à l’Autre de l’Autre, c’est-à-dire, « la Loi ».
La mère désirante induit une Loi autre, qui n’est pas la sienne, ni celle de l’enfant.
C’est dans le discours de la mère que le Père intervient pour  » interdire ».
Ce rôle « d’ interdicteur « , le père le joue à deux niveaux:
- d’une part, s’adressant à l’enfant, il lui notifie: » tu ne seras pas le phallus, objet du désir de ta mère ».
– d’autre part, à l’attention de la mère, il énonce:
« tu ne réincorporeras pas ton enfant pour en faire ton phallus ».
Voilà ce qui signe  » l’interdit de l’inceste ».
Rarement l’enfant s’accommode aisément de cette Loi interdictrice.
Souvent, il continue, pendant un temps, à entretenir l’identification avec ce phallus rival.
L’enfant a beaucoup de mal à admettre, que la toute-puissance de la mère dans laquelle il l’avait installée, puisse soudain disparaître et s’avérer être un mirage et que, par ailleurs, une différence des sexes vienne démentir l’autonomie désirante de la mère.
A cette  » étape phallique primitive » l’enfant est confronté au dilemme: « être ou ne pas être le phallus ».
Si la Loi du Père échoue, cela peut donner naissance à une névrose obsessionnelle ou une perversion .
Classiquement, on observe que, dans un premier mouvement, l’enfant refuse l’idée de ne pas être l’unique objet de désir de la mère et qu’elle puisse se heurter au manque.
Dans un second mouvement, il prend conscience de la réalité, réalisant que le sexe féminin est différent et que la mère connaît une jouissance à laquelle il n’a pas accès et qu’elle partage avec le père.
C’est à ce moment-là que l’enfant finit par renoncer à son identification au phallus.

physiquement constitué d’un « pénis réeravec lequel il peut gratifier la mère, se la réappropriant à travers ce don de pénis.
L’avènement de la féminité dépend, pour l’enfant, de la reconnaissance de la singularité du sexe féminin.
Il doit aussi prendre conscience que c’est précisément cette singularité qui déclenche le Désir du Père.
Il ne s’agit plus, alors, pour l’enfant, d’être ou de ne pas être le phallus mais de « l’avoir ».
Avec la découverte de la différence des sexes se manifeste le complexe de castration.
Cette période, décisive pour l’évolution l’enfant, atteste de la fugacité du phallus et de l’objet d’amour.
Il aimait une mère toute-puissante, phallique, elle est soudain destituée de son pouvoir quasi magique, et n’est plus qu’un objet de manque.
Tout ce qui la rendait désirable, à ses yeux, disparaît.
Un travail psychique important l’oblige à repositionner son désir par rapport au manque.
Pour la petite fille, ce manque est, en première instance, vécu comme une lésion corporelle, une blessure affreuse.
Elle fera l’impossible pour désavouer le caractère de non-retour de cette dissimilitude

Parfois, c’est à l’instar de jeux érotiques d’enfants, au cours desquels garçons et filles se donnent en spectacle, dévoilant leur nudité, qu’elle prend réellement conscience de l’aspect irrémédiable de la conjoncture sexuelle.
Fascinée par le corps du garçon, l’envie de pénis la tenaille, ce qui, selon Freud, signe l’emblème symptomatique de la féminité.
Il arrive, cependant, que la petite fille reste fixée à la zone érogène clitoridienne, à son désir de pénis ou à la mère.
Ces fixations sont source de troubles.
Les phobies, entre autres, proviennent des ces ancrages non surmontés.
Le désir du pénis n’est pas conscient, il s’exprime sous forme de phobies, dont l’objet s’aménage à partir d’une transposition de vecteur.
Lorsque ces phases sont dépassées, et que tout se déroule normalement, la petite fille, animée de l’envie de pénis, va trouver une issue avec le père.
Lors de l’Oedipe et du transfert au Père, on assiste à une transformation de désirs.
Le désir d’un enfant du Père affleure, remplaçant l’envie de pénis, tel que Freud l’avait observé.
Cette phase, reste pour la petite fille, la plus difficile à franchir.
Psychologiquement, les mutations sont considérables et mobilisent une énergie psychique intense.

Elle se tourne vers un autre Objet d’amour, de sexe différent.
Et elle rentre dans une ère de passivité, parfois proche du masochisme, loin des instincts agressifs.
Piera Aulagnier pense que c’est une traversée primordiale pour la femme, et sa relation à la féminité.
Dans sa revendication, voire récrimination du pénis à la mère, la petite fille n’acceptait pas sa féminité.
Alors que l’émergence de son désir d’enfant correspond à une convocation de libido et une sollicitation d’amour dont la destination est le père.
La féminité se réalise dans le cadre de cette renversements psychiques qui sont le témoignage que la dissemblance sexuelle qui tatoue la fille et la révèle . C’est ce qui provoque « le désir le la promesse de don » chez l’homme.
La fille dépend alors de l’homme et de ce que « il doit lui être donne’.
C’est sa manière de se réconforter, en proie à l’angoisse de castration.
Le manque qu’elle ne peut symboliser devient le fondement du désir.
Dans la cause du désir de l’homme réside l’indice de la femme.
La femme a besoin d’un homme pour être reconnue.
Elle ignore ce qui fait qu’elle puisse être désirée, seul l’homme peut le formuler.
La féminité reste un secret pour la femme. L’homme la désire, il peut la renseigner sur la nature de son désir.
Au coeur de sa féminité, elle trouve le manque.
En amour, ce manque devient une don.
Elle désire et offre ce qu’elle ne détient pas et suscite le désir de l’homme.

APPROCHE JUNGIENNE ET TEMPERANCES
Cari Gustav JUNG s’interrogea, tout au cours de sa vie, sur les mystères de la nature humaine.
Il pressentit que la vérité de l’individu se cachait en lui-même, que chacun recelait les clefs de sa propre énigme.
Se tournant vers la psychiatrie, il travailla aux côtés d’ Eugen Bleuler, au Burghôizli et poursuivit des recherches, dans le cadre de sa thèse, sur  » La psychopathologie des phénomènes dits occultes ».
De sa rencontre avec Sigmund Freud naquit une profonde mais éphémère amitié.
Des désaccords théoriques concernant, entre autres, la conception de la libido, contribuèrent à la séparation de ces deux psychanalystes.
Seul, Carl Gustav JUNG traversa une crise troublante, au cours de laquelle « une confrontation avec l’inconscient » s’imposa.
Ceci fut le début d’une phase d’investigations aventureuses, pénibles qui déboucha sur l’inauguration d’une harmonie nouvelle basée sur la communication entre la conscience et l’inconscient.
C’est alors l’entrée définitive, pour Carl Gustav JUNG, dans un monde d’innovations et de découvertes.
Il dira un jour, à propos de cette phase douloureuse de maturation qu’elle fut: « la matière première de l’ oeuvre de ma vie ».

Elaborant une théorie de la structure de la psyché, Jung a une conception très dynamique de l’homme ( Werden / Wandlung).
Les rêves représentent pour lui comme pour Freud  » la voie royale vers l’inconscient », et « traduit un état de l’inconscient à un moment donne’.
C’est avec le concept « d’inconscient collectif’ que Carl Gustav JUNG « s’enhardit », sur le plan théorique, par rapport à Sigmund FREUD.
Cet inconscient collectif s’exprime à travers les  » archétypes », que l’on pourrait définir comme des éléments primordiaux de la psyché humaine.
Ces structures préformées sont nourries par le flux de l’énergie psychique et se caractérisent par une dynamique particulière ; elles s’extériorisent de façons diverses et mouvantes, sous la forme  » d’images archétypiques ».
C’est dans ce contexte, qu’à côté des images parentales, apparaissent deux archétypes que je désire analyser de plus près parce qu’ils peuvent avoir une incidence dans la vie du couple: « l’anima et l’animas »
Ils représentent la polarité sexuelle complémentaire de l’individu.
Selon la théorie élaborée par Cari Gustav Jung, la femme aurait en elle une partie masculine inconsciente: l’animus.
Ce terme signifie souffle, vent, esprit.
L’animus de la femme s’est forgé au fil de ses expériences masculines, et peut prendre les traits du père, du frère.
Fondamentalement on peut dire que l’animus est influencé par le père de la femme.

On peut le repérer, par exemple, sous forme de convictions cachées et « sacrées ».
On voit alors une femme s’exprimer d’une voix forte, virile, tentant de faire accepter ce type de convictions, même par la force, ayant parfois recours à la violence. On sent quelque chose de dur, d’intraitable, d’entêté.
Même chez une femme très féminine on rencontre un obstacle infranchissable, froid. Un des thèmes de l’animus serait:
« La seule chose que je désire au monde, c’est d’être aimée, et il ne m’aime pas.  »
Ou encore:
« Il n’y a que deux issues à cette situation et elles sont également mauvaises ».
Ces idées  » vraies  » lorsqu’elles sont prises dans un contexte général, ne sont pas adaptées à la situation particulière de la femme, mais on peut les discuter, elles viennent du père.
Tout comme l’anima chez l’homme, que nous étudierons plus loin, l’animus peut devenir  » le démon de la mort ».
Un animus négatif peut entraîner la femme vers des désirs, des jugements sur le monde  » tel qu’il devrait être », l’empêchant de nouer de véritables liens avec la réalité et la vie active qui la feraient exister réellement.
C’est alors la mort, comme dans ce conte tzigane, où l’animus négatif est représenté.
 » un bel étranger est accueilli par une femme solitaire, bien qu’un rêve l’ait avertie que cet homme est le roi des morts. Et au bout d’un certain temps, elle le presse de lui révéler qui il est en réalité. Il refuse d’abord en disant qu’elle en mourra. Elle insiste, et brusquement, il lui révèle qu’il est la mort elle-même. L
femme meurt aussitôt de peur ».
Mais l’animus négatif, c’est aussi  » le voleur ou le meurtrier  » dans les légendes. C’est Barbe-bleue qui assassine secrètement ses femmes.
Il représente toutes les pensées destructrices, froides, dont la femme peut être en proie. Les sentiments positifs n’existent plus, elle manigance de sombres projets, souhaitant la mort d’autrui.
Lorsque cette forme d’animus est à l’ oeuvre chez la femme, elle peut provoquer la mort dans son entourage, pousser l’époux vers le suicide, les enfants vers la maladie. La femme peut être  » possédée » pendant un temps, par cet animus négatif, qui la plonge dans des ruminations morbides, dans une grande insécurité psychique, et la dépouillant de tous sentiments humains.
Lorsqu’elle parvient à sortir de cette torpeur, elle se rend compte que sa réalité intérieure et que le monde extérieur sont différents de ce qu’elle croyait fermement.
Mais l’animus peut être très précieux quand il est positif.
Il établit alors des liens avec le Soi, par le biais d’une activité créatrice.
Le rêve d’une femme de quarante-cinq ans illustre cet aspect de l’animus:
 » Deux silhouettes voilées grimpent sur le balcon et pénètrent dans la maison. Elles sont enveloppées de manteaux noirs à cagoule et semblent vouloir nous tourmenter, ma soeur et moi. Ma soeur se cache sous le lit, mais les personnages en cagoule l’en chassent avec un balai et la mettent à la torture. Puis c’est mon tour. Celle de deux silhouettes qui commande me pousse contre le mur et fait des gestes magiques devant mon visage. Entre temps, l’autre dessine quelque chose sur le mur, et quand je le vois, je dis pour les amadouer :  » Oh que c’est bien dessiné! « . Mon tortionnaire a soudain le visage noble d’un artiste, et dit
fièrement : « Oui, vraiment « , et commence à nettoyer ses lunettes.  »
La femme était habituée au sadisme des personnages, car elle était souvent victime de crises d’angoisse au cours desquelles elle s’imaginait que ceux qu’elle aimait allaient disparaître, souffraient, ou bien se trouvaient en danger.
Ici l’animus est représenté par deux personnages, on peut alors penser que les malfaiteurs matérialisent un facteur psychique à double effet.
Dans la vie de la rêveuse, la soeur, très artiste, était morte jeune, sans avoir pu exprimer longtemps son talent.
Par la suite, dans le rêve, on apprend que les voleurs en cagoule sont en fait des artistes masqués, cachés.
En interprétant ce rêve, on voit que les attaques de panique trahissent un danger réel et mortel, mais en même temps l’éventualité d’une activité créatrice.
Si elle se laisse guider par le message du rêve, en développant son talent de peintre, l’animus persécuteur se métamorphosera en activité créatrice bénéfique.
L’animus peut se manifester sous la forme d’un groupe et prend un caractère collectif. Les femmes concernées disent alors  » on « , ou bien  » ils « ,  » tout le monde », insistant sur : » toujours »,  » il faudrait », « on doit ».
L’intégration de l’animus à la conscience est un processus long, ardu,
douloureux, si mais la femme y accorde du temps, de la réflexion, elle se dégagera des influences inconsciente négatives et sera en mesure de se confronter à la réalité.
Cette aventure intérieure est symbolisée dans certains contes et mythes, où le prince, changé en monstre, ou en animal sauvage par une sorcière, ne peut être sauvé que par l’amour d’une jeune fille (  » La Belle et La Bête  » ).

Souvent elle ne doit rien connaître de lui, ni même son visage mais lui accorder toute sa confiance, l’aimer aveuglément pour qu’il retrouve son identité initiale.
Mais c’est à l’issue d’une série de péripéties compliquées, difficiles, empreintes de maux et d’afflictions que l’héroïne finit par délivrer le prince.
C’est alors que l’animus intégré devient un allié précieux.
Il dotera la femme de qualités masculines, comme  » l’initiative, le courage, l’objectivité et la sagesse spirituelle. »
Comme l’anima, que l’on analysera plus tard, on retrouve quatre stades de développement de l’animus.
Dans un premier temps il peut prendre l’apparence d’un athlète, représentant la force physique.
Puis, au deuxième niveau, c’est l’esprit d’initiative, et la qualité de pouvoir organiser l’action.
Au troisième stade, il s’agit du  » verbe « , il est personnifié par un professeur, un prêtre.
Enfin, au quatrième degré, l’animus, à son stade le plus élevé, correspond à la  » Pensée « .
Il donne à la femme une fermeté spirituelle, joue un rôle de soutien.
Parfois il permet à la femme de se mettre en relation avec l’évolution spirituelle de son temps et de développer une profonde sensibilité aux pensées créatrices.

Ces personnages intérieurs importants, inconscients, complémentaires, sont primordiaux, la femme doit aussi savoir accueillir  » l’homme intérieur ».
Il lui faut en prendre conscience et faire sienne cette image archétypique.
L’anima pour l’homme et l’animus pour la femme sont essentiels, car ils créent l’image du sexe opposé dans la psyché consciente, petit à petit, au moment de la phase de séparation d’avec les parents.
C’est au moment de l’adolescence, répétition de l’Oedipe, que se joue la période la plus importante de l’individu, par rapport aux imagos parentales.
A ce sujet, on peut noter que le divergences théoriques apparurent progressivement entre Freud et Jung, sur des points fondamentaux.
En, 1912, la publication de la deuxième partie du grand livre de Jung  » Métamorphoses et symboles de la libido » précisent ces différences de points de vues dont Freud a conscience.
Jung élargit le concept de  » libido » ( sorte de tension générale), sa spécificité sexuelle s’estompe et tend à faire de l’Oedipe un symbole et une métaphore supérieures. Si Freud considère d’Oedipe par rapport au père, Jung l’envisage par rapport à la mère.
Pour Jung, le mot  » Sphinx » éveille l’idée de secrets et de mystères. Il pose aussi des énigmes comme le Sphinx d’Oedipe, mais ce serait une représentation de l’imago maternelle,  » la mère terrible et dévorante ».
En répondant au Sphinx, Oedipe est précipité dans un inceste matriarcal.
Le Sphinx est l’enfant d’Echidna, être mixte, jolie Jeune femme par le haut, et serpent affreux par le bas.

Cet être double correspond à l’image de la mère, moitié humaine et digne d’être aimée, moitié monstrueuse et terrifiante.
A ce sujet, on peut évoquer les propos de Freud qui a toujours eu du mal à  » être une mère dans le transfert  » .
Quant à l’analyse des rêves, même si les deux hommes se passionnèrent pour ce sujet, elle reste chez Jung une tentative d’appréhension du  » Tout « .
Pour lui, le rêve est une voie ouverte sur  » L’univers cosmique « , préexistante à l’homme et demeurant après lui.
Dans  » L’interprétation des rêves  » Freud essaie de décrypter la pathologie de la névrose à travers le rêve, dégageant les pensées latentes et inconscientes en deçà de la perception dans laquelle s’origine la représentation.
Jung développe un rapport singulier au Sacré que l’on ne trouve pas chez Freud. Cette relation au Sacré provoquerait chez l’homme le sentiment de  » numineux « . A ce sujet, il écrit:
 » La numinosité est totalement soustraite à la volonté consciente, car elle met le sujet dans un état de saisissement  » ( Ergriffenheit ).
Cette notion est un Intensitâtfaktor émotionnel ou énergétique et présuppose la croyance en la religion, et l’expérience de la rencontre avec le divin.
Freud a un tout autre rapport à Dieu et à la religion.
( article inachevé )

Fraulich?Weiblich? (Qui « sied  » au féminin « / Féminité )

Jeudi 1 avril 2010

En s’interrogeant sur les termes « Féminité et Corps », on constate qu’en français, à première vue, ces expressions semblent ne pas prêter pas à confusion.
Féminité, renvoie à Femme.
Le Féminin n’en reste pas moins un objet de recherche étendue.
Corps peut prendre le sens d’ enveloppe matérielle des êtres, d’organisme, de chair, de physique…
En Allemand il existe plusieurs mots pour parler du Corps et de la Femme.
Le vocable  » Corps « , se traduit par Leib ou Körper:
Paul Laurent Assoun, psychanalyste et professeur à l’Université Paris VII écrit:
« A propos des deux corps Köper et Leib » : L’Allemand prend acte de cette pliure au sein de la corporéité en distinguant au moins deux termes: le corps, c’est une architecture visible, un corps en sa réalisation anatomique ( Körper ). Bâtisse corporelle ou anatomie ( Körperbau) qui peut être atteinte en son intégrité, par une blessure ou lésion ( Kôrperverletzung).
C’est celui qui tombe sous le regard, adhérence somatique du sujet, en son enracinement sensible.
Le corps, c’est aussi Leib: corps compris à la fois au figuré,
- principe métaphysique, dans l’opposition à l’âme, ( Seele)
- et comme d’un » intérieur » ( inneres) c’est le giron ou sein  » maternel », les entrailles ( corps viscéral) ou le ventre – enracinement du vivant, chaire vive. Par opposition au  » Kôrper », instance de la vie animale, le « Leib  » , c’est la vie organique.
Le corps, c’est à la fois cet « être surface », cette carcasse  » Rumpf’ et cette substance qui donne sa profondeur à la « personne »vivante. Mais c’est aussi le corps cadavérisé ( Leichnam, Leiche ), la dépouille mortelle où s’avoue en quelque sorte l’être-là du corps.
Enracinement dans la vie ( Leben qui peut consoner avec Leib) et figure de la « facticité ».
La psychosomatique s’est promue, au carrefour de la médecine et le psychanalyse, à partir de l’opposition de ces corps.
La métapsychologie n’a pas besoin de cette rallonge : dans la mesure où elle contient, bien relue et mise au travail clinique par cette  » doctrine du corps », cette mise en tension entre Kiirper et Leib. C’est ce que nous cherchons à faire entendre dans les précédentes leçons.
J’adhère à cette vision des choses et je dirai que » Keirper  » est de l’ordre de ce qu’on voit et qu’il est possible de toucher, saisir, voir.
C’est aussi de l’ordre de la forme et du corps que l’on entraîne ( le corps du sportif), que l’on sculpte dans les Clubs de Fitness et les salles de musculation ( Keirper -corps – muscle-viande humaine ).
C’est aussi celui qui fait l’objet de soins « corporels » (Körperpflege).
Ce corps-là se trouve sur le versant du type de constitution. de la structure morphologique et interne ( Körperbautypen, Körperarterie, Körperschlagader ).
C’est aussi le corps-machine, qui présente des dysfonctionnements, parfois, comme chez les handicapés moteurs, et locomoteurs ( Körperbehinderte).
Avec le  » Körper « , on s’adresse aussi au mécanisme, à l’activité organique.
Chaque organe remplit alors une fonction particulière, qui va dans le sens d’un agencement de la vie, ainsi on est plongé dans le monde des transformations internes, les compositions de sécrétions, du sang…( Körperflüssigkeiten ).
C’est aussi le corps palpable, repérable par son poids, sa taille ( Körpergewicht, Körpergaße), celui qui plaît, sur un regard.
A l’égard du  » Leib « , on peut dire, qu’initialement c’était en référence avec l’histoire des religions et la théologie.
A côté de l’âme ( Seele ), le  » Leib  » apparaît comme une autre réalité de l’Homme ( Problèmes entre le corps et l’âme ).
Initialement, dans les milieux religieux, on délaissait un peu le  » Leib « , au profit de l’âme, mais on lui accordait cependant une certaine place, puisque, lorsqu’il s’agissait de la croyance d’une vie après la mort, on instaura les sépultures, tombeaux, mausolées…
En théologie on parle de  » Leib Christi « ; pour l’Eglise c’est le  » Corpus Christi « , et le pain, l’hostie, au moment de l’Eucharistie.
C’est une notion de corps sacré, le corps du fils de Dieu sur Terre, le corps du Christ qui revit à chaque messe et que l’on peut incorporer.
Il s’agissait d’une dépendance, d’un asservissement du paysan par rapport au seigneur ( Leibherr ) auquel il était lié.
 » Leibeigen  » induit une dépendance de la personne intime à un suzerain, ou tout être supérieur, omnipotent ayant tous les droits sur cet individu.
Mais c’est aussi aimer  » Corps et âme » (Leib und Seele ) et « Avoir le diable au corps ( dans la peau ) »: » den Teufel lin LEIB haben « .
Par rapport au  » Körper « , il y a dans le  » Leib « , une flamme supplémentaire, une vie, inconsciente souvent, des pulsions, des désirs…
 » Der leibliche Vater ( Père ) », par exemple, c’est le père qui a conçu l’enfant.
Quand on dit:  » Sie ist gesegneten Leibes  » ( Elle a un corps sacré), cela signifie:  » elle est enceinte « .
 » Leibesfrucht ( fruit )  » correspondrait au bébé dans le corps de la mère, le fruit de ses entrailles.
Et puis, pour terminer, peut-être, cette expression:
 » Keine Ehre im Leib haben  » : ne pas avoir de dignité, d’honneur.. ( de tripes, de…)
Ces exemples montrent bien que le corps au sens de  » Leib « .
Il existe pleinement, il est traversé par les émotions.
C’est la chair noble, sensible, liée à l’esprit.
Weiblichkeit et Fraulichkeit?
En ce qui concerne le substantif » Féminité », la langue allemande est plus élargie, mais cependant elle ne plaît pas toujours aux féministes.
Femme se dit:  » Frau, Weib, Dame  »
Il existe plusieurs manières de traduire Féminité en allemand:  » Weiblichkeit, Fraulichkeit, Frauentum, Weiberart » .
Je ne retiendrai, que « Fraulichkeit et Weiblichkeit », plus proches de la présente recherche.
 » Fraulichkeit « , correspondrait à ce qui s’adresse plus à l’apparence et vient de  » Frau « ( femme).
C’est l’épouse: Frau HUBER, au sens de Madame HUBER et aussi toute la médecine féminine:  » Frauenarzt  » ( la gynécologie) .
Ce sont les maladies féminines, liées au sexe de la femme:  » Frauenkrankeitheiten »
C’est aussi le mot utilisé pour traduire le mouvement féministe:  » Frauenbewegung »
C’est aussi  » Unsere Liebe Frau  » ( Notre Dame) et tout ce qui concerne la recherche, les études sur les femmes, Women studies « Frauenforschung, feministische Wissenschaft « .

On évoque aussi le  » Frauenmilch « , pour le lait maternel, et  » Frauenraub « pour les rapts, prises d’otage, enlèvements de femmes et de fillettes  » .
Mais le coeur de la femme, son essence, se retrouvent plus dans la notion de :
 » Weiblichkeit « .
Ceci vient de « Weib  » (femme ).
A noter que l’adjectif » weiblich  » est aussi le ternie employé en grammaire pour le genre d’un substantif, et aussi celui qui est mentionné sur les passeports pour stipuler le sexe de la personne.
Mais  » Weib  » est parfois connoté péjorativement_
 » Weibisch  » est utilisé pour ce qui est efféminé chez un homme et  » Weibgeschwâtz  » désigne les commérages.
En revanche,  » Weibertreue  » définit la fidélité féminine.
Et on parle de  » Mann und Weib « , pour le couple.
« Ein Weib « , c’est aussi une épouse, mais une vraie, qui ne porte pas forcément le même nom, mais qui partage la vie d’un homme.
C’est à la fois plus simple, et plus compliqué.
On parle ici de la femme, avec un homme ( Mânnlichkeit / Weiblichkeit ).
De l’accord entre féminité et masculinité, virilité.
 » Weiblichkeit  » semble plus tourné vers l’intérieur de l’être, ce qu’il vit, ressent en
particulier, qu’un homme ne pourrait éprouver.
Cela rime, dans mes associations personnelles, avec  » weich « : doux, suave, tendre.
Alors que  » Fraulichkeit  » est plus orienté vers l’extérieur, ce qui paraît, ce qui est vu et peut se fabriquer.
 » Weiblichkeit « , est discret, pudique, secret, il s’enfuit dès qu’il est dévoilé.
rEn même temps, il envahit la femme, la capture.
Elle est sans défense face à ce phénomène, ne peut lui échapper, et doit s’en laisser pétrir.
Pour ce qu’il en est du concept de  » Fraulichkeit « , on peut dire qu’il est trop restreint, ne parvient pas à identifier la femme, dans sa subjectivité typique.
Alors que le principe de  » Weiblichkeit  » délimite une acception plus vaste, identité et subjectivité sont présentes.
On y trouve une conscience de soi, une existence, une épuration quintessenciée de la femme.
(article inachevé)