Psychoanalysis
School · 1890s-1930s, Vienna, with continuing clinical influence · Psychology, stage 2: Map the schools
Psychoanalysis is the theory and the treatment Sigmund Freud developed from clinical work with patients whose symptoms had no physical cause. Its central proposal is that much of mental life is unconscious, that early experience shapes adult character, and that symptoms are meaningful rather than random, expressing a conflict the person cannot admit. The treatment followed from the theory: free association, dream analysis, and attention to what the patient transfers onto the analyst were meant to make the unconscious material available. As a science, psychoanalysis is in poor standing. Its central claims are difficult to state in a form that could be shown false, its evidence base is case material rather than controlled study, and it sits outside mainstream experimental psychology, though its influence on clinical practice, literature, and ordinary vocabulary is enormous and undisputed.
What it claims
- Much of what determines behaviour is unconscious and not available to introspection.
- Symptoms and dreams are meaningful expressions of unadmitted conflict.
- Early childhood experience shapes adult personality.
- Making unconscious material conscious, through analysis, relieves the conflict.
Key ideas
People
Sources
- Psychoanalysis Wikipedia
- Sigmund Freud Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyThe section on the scientific status of the theory is the most useful part for a beginner.
- The Interpretation of Dreams Classics in the History of Psychology, York University
