Psychoanalysis is a theory of personality and human development a method for investigating the unconcious andconcious forces governing neurotic disorders . Pyschoanalysis has been one of the greatest intellectual forces shaping Western thought in the 20th centary. Psychoanalysis was found by Sigmund Freud. Freud’s discoveries grew out of collaborative relationship with another Viennese Physician , Joseph Breuer .
Through their treatment of several patients suffering from hysteria , they gained important nsights into the meaning of each patient’s symptoms . Freud made a number of frenchant discoveries relating not only to understanding of neurotic symptom but also to the functioning (psychodynamics) of the human mind, including such phenomena as dreams , slips of the tongue , jokes , rituals , religion , and evolution of civilization. At first encountering violent oppositions , Freud’s ideas gradually gained world wide acceptance.
According to Freud every child must learn to adapt to three ajor components within his personality created by : Powerful strivings from within , which are basically irrational and often self-contradictory and incapable of fulfillment ; the demands of society for socialization , conveyed at first by parental injunctions and the imposition of disciplline and the growing desire for independence, autonomy , and self direction .
According to psychoanalytic theory , childhood development is divided into three broad periods : The oral phase refers to the earliest xperiences surrounding a child’s close relationship to his mother, including feelings of being nurtured and loved . The anal period is characterized by experiences relating to the imposition of social demands for orderliness and compliance , examplified by toilet training.
And the phallic phasse that precedes the Oedipal peroid pertains to conflicts arising from erotic wishes toward the parent of the oppoiste sex . Each peroid poses challenges to the child , which , depending on a variety of circumstances , are either successfully urmounted or lead to fixation and difficulties in achieving adult maturity.
Psychoanalysis , the most ambitious and complex form of psychotherapy , is based on the realization that neurotic difficulties in adulthood are the outcome of unresolved childhood conflicts. Since all human beings have the tendency to reenact these conflicts in their interpersonal relationship , psychoanalysis aims to bring about resolution of such neurotic conflicts by means of a corrective emotional experience through a relationship with a trained specialist.
