Psychoanalysis is a set of psychological and psychotherapeutic theories and associated techniques, originally popularized by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and stemming partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Since then, psychoanalysis has expanded and been revised, reformed and developed in different directions. This was initially by Freud's colleagues and students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung, who went on to develop their own ideas independently from Freud. The basic tenets of psychoanalysis include the following:
- besides the inherited constitution of personality, a person's development is determined by events in early childhood;human behavior, experience, and cognition is largely influenced by irrational drives;
- irrational drives are unconscious;
- attempts to bring these drives into awareness meet psychological resistance in the form of defense mechanisms;conflicts between conscious and unconscious (repressed) material can result in mental disturbances such as neurosis, neurotic traits, anxiety, depression etc.;
- the liberation from the effects of the unconscious material is achieved through bringing this material into the conscious mind (via e.g. skilled guidance, i.e. therapeutic intervention).
Psychoanalysis has been criticized on numerous fronts, including the view that it constitutes pseudoscience, but it remains influential within psychiatry, more so in some quarters than others.
Psychoanalysis in "But It Does Move"[]
In 1633, Galileo Galilei was a prisoner of the Roman Inquisition for his statement that the geocentric model of the solar system was wrong and that the Earth revolved around the Sun.
He had been interrogated by ten different cardinals before he was brought before Cardinal Sigismondo Gioioso, who suggested that Galileo go through an analysis.
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