We start with this because it was the original technique devised by the father of psychotherapy, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939).

Freud’s most significant contribution to the history of thought was his assertion – pretty much accepted these days, but revolutionary in its time – that man was not, in essence, a rational animal. This overturned over two thousand years of thinking, ever since the Greek philosopher Aristotle asserted precisely the opposite. Freud did not ‘invent’ the unconscious mind – it had been known for centuries that many thoughts people had were half-conscious or half-expressed.  But he was the first to advance the theory that the mainsprings of human behaviour were a series of entirely unconscious drives. He believed that mental illness symptoms were caused by the efforts of the conscious person to reconcile the demands of society with these animalistic drives and to balance them against each other while still retaining some conception of a coherent self.

Freud couched his theory in entirely psychological terms and many of his concepts these days seem old-fashioned, unscientific or even a bit ‘mad’ themselves, so it is worth keeping in mind that a lot of what he theorised turned out to be true in the subsequent century, as neurologists discovered the neural and endocrine pathways that drive much of our behaviour.

Psychoanalysis is an outwardly simple endeavour: the patient lies on a couch and is invited to ‘free-associate’ or say whatever comes into their head. However during his work with patients Freud discovered that patients had great difficulty simply ‘coming out with it’. He devised a second theory, called transference, which said that the reason patients can’t say what is on their mind is because the therapist comes to represent parental figures from the past. In this way Freud also devised the idea of therapy as a kind of ‘test-tube relationship’ – a venue in which the patient (or, to use the term more commonly used today, client) practices new ways of relating to people in the safe space of the consulting room by using the therapist as an ‘object’ against whom to bounce the desire, hatred, distrust, need and so on that the person may feel for other people and which may get in the way of them achieving satisfactory relationships.

Pure Freudian psychoanalysis is these days a rare commodity. Psychoanalytic training is lengthy and arduous, and a course of psychoanalytic treatment – which usually requires attendance at least three times a week – is exacting and expensive, a major personal commitment. However it is available, especially in London.

Contact

The British Psychoanalytic Society - http://www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/ - 0207 563 5002