THEME & VARIATIONS

If self-analysis made Freud a relatively adjusted man, it never blunted the sharpness of his search for understanding. He was too restless an explorer to remain content with his theories, worked until his death on amendments and additions. He was far less tolerant toward others' discontent with his theories, bitterly opposed some followers' deviations, but might well have accepted others that have developed since. Some rudiments of the Freudian main theme and principal variations:

Sigmund Freud held that the nature of man is essentially biological; man is born with certain instinctual drives. Most notable: the drive toward self-gratification. Basic mental energy, or libido, is equated with sexual energy by making the word "sex" stand for all pleasure.

Infant's first search for gratification is limited to release of hunger tension--oral phase. If there is no nipple handy, he puts thumb in mouth. Next comes satisfaction from defecation--anal phase. Third, pleasure from sensation in sexual parts--phallic phase. (Association of sexual gratification with reproduction--genital phase--does not come until sexual maturity.) Beginning about age two, the child's emotional attachment to mother leads to wishes to displace father--Oedipal feelings (the older, more rigid concept of an Oedipus complex is now frowned upon).

The psyche is divided horizontally into conscious and unconscious, vertically into id, ego and superego. Gradually the child's unconscious fills more or less deliberately with things forgotten (suppressed] because they are unpleasant, and, more importantly, with emotions and drives which are too painful ever to be tolerated in consciousness (repressed).

The id, entirely unconscious, most primitive part of the mind, is concerned only with gratification of drives. The ego, almost entirely conscious, develops from experience and reason, deals with perception of the environment, tries to go about governing id. Superego, largely unconscious, sits as judge, decides whether or not ego may permit id the gratification it seeks; it is conscience, made up of attitudes absorbed unwittingly in childhood and (to a much less extent) of attitudes consciously learned or adopted later.

Neurosis, to Freud, results from unsuccessful attempt by the personality to achieve harmony among id, ego and superego, and this failure in turn results from arrest of development at an immature stage. Commonest cause of emotional disharmony: failure to resolve Oedipal feelings. Example: many girls who profess to seek marriage actually avoid it because the prospect activates the threat of unacceptable emotions which are fixated to their fathers.

Among the mechanisms used to deal with conflicts: projection involves denial of an unacceptable element in the self and projecting it onto others, e.g., man who bangs desk and shouts: "Who's excited? You're excited, not me!" Reaction formation covers conversion of unacceptable hostility into cloying solicitousness, seen in many do-gooders and some overprotective mothers who unconsciously reject their children.

Another way of using libidinal energy: sublimation into constructive and creative work or play.

To resolve neuroses, patient on couch tells in free association all that comes into his mind, especially about early trauma (shock). Since infancy and much of childhood are consciously "forgotten," these experiences must be recaptured with the help of the language of dreams--perhaps the most important single tool of analysis. There is no absolute symbolism (snakes may be phallic to one dreamer but to another merely reminiscent of a trip to the zoo), hence no universal key to the meaning of dreams. Analysis is complete when the patient has developed social responsibility, having dredged up all pertinent childhood traumas, recognized his unconscious Oedipal and other socially unacceptable impulses, and learned at a deep emotional level rather than a superficial intellectual level to live with such id-bits.

Alfred Adler (1870-1937) developed "individual psychology," which denies the overriding importance of infantile sexuality, argues that sexual maladjustments are a symptom, not a cause of neurosis. Adler gave inferiority complex to the language, said infants have inferiority feelings because they are small, helpless. Lack of parental tenderness, neglect or ridicule may make these feelings neurotic. Natural tendency is to seek compensation by becoming superior, hence open struggle for naked power. Power drives are often neurotic because directed to impractical goals. Emphasized ego over id.

Carl Gustav Jung of Zurich holds that primal libido, or life force, is composed of both sexual and nonsexual energy, accepts an individual unconscious similar to Freud's but sees also a collective unconscious containing man's "racial memories." Within this are emotional stereotypes (archetypes) common to all races of man, e.g., the Jovian figure of the "old, wise man," the earth-mother. In Jungian "analytical psychology," the analyst participates more actively than in Freudian analysis. Jung aims especially at people over 40, largely because he believes they most feel the need of a religious outlook, which he encourages.

Otto Rank (1884-1939) went Freud one better, held that Oedipal feelings came too late to be decisive. Real trouble, said he, was birth trauma--the shock of having to leave the warm security of the womb for the harsh reality of separate life. Anxiety caused by this experience formed sort of reservoir which should seep away gradually during maturation. If it persisted, then neurosis set in. Rank hoped to shorten analysis by going back to birth trauma, ignoring most of childhood.

Karen Horney (1885-1952) applied the thinking of anthropologists and sociologists to psychoanalysis, gave great weight to cultural factors in neurosis. Rejected Freud's biological orientation, emphasized importance of present life situation. Modified Adler's concept of neurotic goals, adding that these contain their own sources of anxiety. Thus in coping with one difficulty, patient may set up neurotic defenses which bring on new difficulties, and so on. Widely remembered for her unfortunately titled book, Self-Analysis (1942), which is no do-it-yourself kit for cracks in the psyche.

Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949) held that the human individual is the product of interpersonal relations, based an entire analytic theory on this concept. Pattern of child's earliest nonsexual relationships with significant figures largely (but not rigidly) determines the pattern of all later interpersonal integration. Man's aims are seen as pursuit of satisfaction (biological) and pursuit of security (cultural). If society denies satisfaction in sexual sphere, neurosis may result, but according to Sullivanians (a numerically small but influential school in U.S.), it comes far more often from frustration, for whatever reason, in cultural sphere.

Erich Fronini of Manhattan and Mexico City denies that satisfaction of instinctual drives is focal problem, points out that man has fewer inherited behavior patterns than any other creature. In feudal times, he argues, the stratified, crystallized society wherein every individual knew his place gave security. Renaissance and mercantilism brought freedom from antlike existence but conferred (except on a privileged few) no freedom to work toward individual self-fulfillment. Thus neurosis today results mainly from frustrations which present trend of society threatens to intensify.

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