Tag Archives: Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis and trauma

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Psychoanalysis is a theory that assumes that the past shapes the present and stresses the importance of unconscious factors that can influences our conscious thoughts and actions. In other words psychoanalysis analyzes how unconscious factors influence conscious thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Sigmund Freud was the first psychoanalyst. With the discovery of the unconscious, he developed the idea that the ‘unconscious conflict’ is significant in subsequent normal and abnormal behavior. He then pursued a theory of psychoanalytic treatment that would help patients recall suppressed traumatic memories and form ‘associative connection’ with conscious thoughts. Psychoanalytic treatment or therapy tackles conscious thought by tracing these thoughts to their origin.

My mom is a therapist and a psychoanalytic fellow at Penn. She brought up in a conversation an article she read about a woman who went through psychoanalytic therapy. The woman began therapy for depression; she also struggled with aspects of her social, economic, and intimate life. She did not know why. Slowly, the woman began to talk about how she would feel distraught visiting her parents, and feel extreme discomfort regarding a tree that stands in the yard behind her parents house. When asked about adult relationships as a child and the potential of sexual abuse, the woman said no confidently. The psychoanalyst began to realize the woman may have dissociative symptoms related to a trauma she may have experience as a child. After working through unconscious mental processes with her psychoanalyst, the woman began to have vivid flashbacks of being tied to the tree for hours by a family member and abused. In an article on Psychoanalysis, the experiments conducted by Jung and Riklin are discussed. They found that the process of association is a process that is beyond a subjects control and attention plays the greatest part in the process of association. The above example exemplifies the minds power to dissociate traumatic events and bury them into our unconscious memory because they are too painful. While rehashing these events were painful, the woman was able to work through the behaviors and emotions related to her trauma that she was playing out in other aspects of her life such as social and professional relationships.

Sources –

Arden, Abraham. Psychoanalysis: its theories and practical application. New York: n.p., 1972. 116. Web. 5 Feb. 2014. <http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31822013766522;view=1up;seq=2>.

Pfister, Oscar, and Eduard Hitschmann. Definition and history of psychoanalysis and Freud’s theories of the neuroses. New York: n.p., 1916. Web. 5 Feb. 2014. <link –> http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nnc2.ark:/13960/t91841x87 >.

 

Psychoanalysis

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One of my childhood friends, Karla, grew up in a very narcissistic environment. Being part of a prestigious school district meant she had to deal with the pressure of social statuses throughout all of her middle school and high school career. She confessed to me that in middle school she started to care too much about what others thought of her, which completely disrupted her personality. She is now one of the most insecure girls I have ever met, and it is all because of the way she was brought up.

This gradual change in personality is due to the scientific theory of psychoanalysis, developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud in the early 1900s. Psychoanalysis states that a person’s behavior is greatly influenced by their childhood experiences and events. Karla has an insecure personality because of the influence that her middle school peers had on her. Any traumas or life-changing occurrences that a child experiences are also likely to shape how they will behave in the future. When I was three years old I moved from Spain, the country I was born in, to America. That sudden change in my early life had a significant impact on the way I am today, since I act more like an American than a Spanish person because that is the culture I grew up around. Our unconscious mind adapts to our early life stages and significantly changes the way we behave as adults.

Freud started to notice the relationship between past experiences and personality through his clinical work with patients who suffered a variety of psychological problems. By listening to their life stories, Freud concluded that these problems were the result of their unconscious adaptation to the conditions they experienced in their early lives. His theory of psychoanalysis was published in the book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, and had a significant impact in the study of the mind, and in the field of psychology as a whole.

 

 

 

 

Citations

 

 

Cherry, Kendra. “Psychoanalysis.” About.com Psychology. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Feb. 2014.

 

“Psychoanalysis.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Jan. 2014. Web. 02 Feb. 2014.

Psychoanalysis of a Serial Killer

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Psychoanalysis is one of psychology’s roots that came about in the 1900s. Psychoanalysis thoroughly examined the early mind and how childhood experiences greatly influences the development of later personality traits and psychological problems. For instance, that was exactly the case with serial killer, Aileen Wuornos. Wuornos was a prostitute who killed her male clients. Why did she have this undeniable hatred for men that caused her to kill them? Many people speculate it was because of her childhood. Aileen did not have dependable male figures in her early life. Her father was sent to jail for child molestation before she even received a chance to know him, and then he hung himself in jail. Her mother abandoned her, and she was to live with her grandparents. Friends of Wuornos suggest that her alcoholic grandfather sexually and physically abused her. She was also pregnant at age thirteen. On top of that, she was in a sexual relationship with her own brother, Keith. Aileen started prostitution at an incredibly young age. She was in her preteens and she would have sex with males in exchange for money and cigarettes. She never had real relationships with these men, and they never respected her. They simply treated her as a sexual object. Aileen just wanted to be accepted and respected. Unfortunately, very few people accepted her and even more people disrespected her, particularly males. Wurornos was kicked out of her house by her grandfather after her grandmother died. She hitchhiked for years as a teenager. She prostituted and performed many petty crimes, like stealing.

It is likely she did these reckless things throughout her life because Aileen never had a steady, loving relationship in her life. Furthermore, she had to do these irresponsible things to make it through another day. Because since an early age, she always had to fend for herself. I believe all of this hatred and defense mechanism she had throughout her life, eventually accumulated overtime and that is when she snapped. I view her victims as symbols of all the men who mentally and physically hurt her. For once in her life, she was in control.

 

“Aileen Wuornos.” Crime & Investigation Network – Crime Files. A&E Television Networks, 2008. Web. 04 Feb. 2014.

 

Jessica Taylor

Psychoanalysis and Injuries

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            Psychoanalysis is a theory developed by known psychologist Sigmund Freud.  This theory emphasizes how our unconscious actions or thoughts influence our conscious mind.  Freud believed that our past childhood experiences, such as traumatic childhood memories, impact “the development of later personality traits and psychological problems” (Wede Psych 100 Lecture 2).  The past is the root for current problems.

            Psychoanalysis comes into the picture whenever I play soccer.  Soccer has been my life since I was five years old.  While playing in a game for my home club team the summer right before my junior year of high school, I got into a bad soccer incident on the field.  I was going towards the net with the ball, and I became trapped between a defender and the goalie.  I ended up colliding with the goalie and breaking both my tibia and fibula in my right leg.  Obviously it was the most painful thing I have ever felt, and I was immediately taken to the hospital to get casted.  After a year of going from one different sized cast to the next and using crutches or a wheelchair to get around, I found out that I needed surgery on my leg.  Getting surgery meant another full year of a cast and crutches.  So the whole process to get me fixed and healed took around two years.  This experience was the most painful, emotional, disheartening, and tough experience in my life.  However, I finally conquered it and eventually got back to playing as much as my leg could handle.

            Now, I play for Penn State’s Women’s Club Soccer team.  I play forward on the team, which is the same position I played when I broke my leg.  Since I went through such a traumatic experience after colliding with the goalie, I now subconsciously always avoid any tough confrontation with a goalie during a game.  Whenever there is a 50/50 chance for me or the goalie to have the ball in a game, I always back away from the challenge and let her have the ball.  I think I do this because breaking my leg affected my thought processes so heavily that I would rather lose the ball than take a chance at re-breaking my leg.  I am still so terrified of the possibility of going through all of that again, which is why my legs just automatically stop whenever I am running towards a competition with a goalie.  That past childhood traumatic experience has affected the way I act today.