#Schoolwork/CE
this kind of block for all quotations or additional notes
Clinical Examples, Examples/Case study, Clinical Background, Review, Analogy and Exceptions and other words implying a smaller subdivision than the third-order title will be bolded and used in text and lists.
Vocabulary are linked to the nomenclature section.
Adhesiveness: The tenacity with which the libido clings to certain tendencies and objects Chap 22
Anxiety Fulfillment: While dreams can fulfill wishes, they can also serve to express and alleviate anxiety. Freud proposed that anxiety-provoking or distressing experiences and emotions could be transformed into symbolic representations in dreams, allowing the dreamer to process and cope with their fears and anxieties. Dreams may act as a form of psychological defense mechanism, helping to discharge or reduce anxiety by converting it into symbolic imagery. Chap 13
Auto-erotic: sexual arousal or gratification achieved by oneself, without the involvement of another person Chap 21
Castration complex: the castration complex arises from the fear of losing or having one's genitals removed as punishment for one's forbidden desires. In the context of the Oedipus complex, boys experience unconscious sexual desires for their mothers and perceive their fathers as rivals for their mother’s affection. The fear of punishment by the father, often perceived as a threat to castrate the child for harboring incestuous desires, leads to anxiety and conflict. Chap 13
Dreams: Conscious cognitive activities during REM sleep. Expressing β and θ characters in the Fourier-transformed EEG graph.
Dream-work: The process that changes the latent into the manifest dream Chap 11
Ego: Moderator between superego and id
Endogenous (Diseases): psychological disorders or symptoms that originate from internal conflicts, unconscious processes, or innate predispositions rather than from external factors or events. These may include neuroses, personality disorders, or other mental health conditions that stem from internal psychological dynamics. Chap 22
Eros: The pursuit of life-sustaining and life-enhancing activities, creativity, and the formation of emotional bonds and relationships.
Exogenous (Diseases): psychological disorders or symptoms that originate from external factors or events rather than from internal conflicts or unconscious processes. These may include traumas, environmental stressors, or societal influences.Chap 22
Homosexual: a paraphiliac disorder in which only a partner of the same sex arouses the patient Chap 20
Id: drives our needs and desires(need for food, water, social interactions, and sex)
Libido: The state ego is when the superego disappears. Including sexual desires, Eros, and self-preserving actions. 9: Dream Censor
Libido Fixation: the persistent attachment of psychic energy to a specific stage of psychosexual development, influencing personality traits and behaviors. Chap 23
Localized: a purely psychological process that has nothing to do with sexuality. Chap 22
Object of Love: the person or thing toward which one's romantic or affectionate feelings are directed, often central to one's emotional attachment and desires. Chap 21
Obsession: a unconscious fixation of an idea 16: Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry
Oedipus-complex: a stage of psychosexual development in which a child experiences unconscious feelings of desire for the parent of the opposite sex, along with feelings of rivalry or hostility toward the parent of the same sex. Chap 21
Return of the Libido: the reemergence of the libido after a period of suppression or absence, often triggered by external stimuli or psychological factors. Chap 23
Principle of Pleasure: a fundamental concept in psychoanalytic theory proposed by Sigmund Freud. It suggests that individuals seek immediate gratification from their instinctual desires to avoid pain and maximize pleasure. Chap 22
Punishment fulfillment: This concept refers to dreams in which the dreamer experiences punishment or guilt for unconscious desires or impulses that are deemed unacceptable by the individual's conscience or societal norms. In these dreams, the dreamer may be subjected to symbolic punishments or experience feelings of guilt or shame, reflecting internal conflicts and moral judgments. Punishment fulfillment dreams can serve as a means of moral or ethical self-regulation, allowing the dreamer to reconcile conflicting impulses and maintain a sense of moral integrity.
Regression: reverting to earlier, typically less mature behaviors or coping mechanisms in response to stressful situations or conflicts. It's a defense mechanism where individuals retreat to a previous stage of development for emotional comfort. Chap 22
Secondary Treatment: the separation of individual dream-segments Chap 11
Sexual Sadism: deriving sexual pleasure from causing physical or psychological pain or suffering to others during sexual activity. Chap. 20
Sexual Masochism: deriving sexual pleasure or arousal from experiencing pain, humiliation, or suffering inflicted by oneself or others during sexual activities. Chap. 20
Sublimation: a defense mechanism where individuals channel unacceptable impulses or emotions into socially acceptable activities or behaviors. Chap 22
Superego: The restrictions of moral and community guidelines.
Suppression: the effort to prevent certain thoughts, emotions, or desires from entering into awareness or expression. Chap. 19
Transference: the unconscious redirection of feelings and desires from one person or situation to another, often resembling past relationships or experiences. Chap. 19
Traumatic Fixation: an unresolved psychological attachment to past trauma, influencing behavior, emotions, and thought patterns in the present.
Traumatic Neuroses: a psychological condition marked by anxiety, depression, and other symptoms resulting from exposure to a traumatic event or series of events.
Wish fulfillment: the act of imagining the fulfillment of a wish
This does not mean that a diagnosis can be made with just a consultation session.
The psychology of errors
TODO: COMPLETE NOTES UP TO CHAPT 7
Ex “A boy of 22 months is to present a basket of cherries as a birthday gift. He does so very unwillingly, although they promise him that he will get some of them himself. The next morning he relates to his dream, “Hermann eat all cherries.”
Infantile patients lack sexual awareness, i.e. no desire to disguise dreams. Note that it does not mean children lack sexual desire.
“The pig dreams of acorns, the goose of maize. Of what does the hen dream? Of millet.”
Dreams are the gratification of an unfulfilled wish.
Dreams' two main characteristics:
Causes:
Dreams of infantile characters are straightforward and contain no distortion. These provide a basic template for how to analyze the latent content of a dream. The next chapter elaborates on how to connect the latent and the manifest by decoding the censored contents of dreams.
Review: Dreams are the removal of sleep-disturbing psychic stimuli by way of hallucinated satisfaction.
Dream distortions are the thing that makes the dream strange.
Clinical Example
In this dream described in the clinical example, a woman of fifty dreams of offering her services, specifically love services, to a military hospital. Despite her intention to speak with the chief physician, she finds herself in a room filled with officers and army doctors. She delivers a speech offering the assistance of herself and other women to soldiers, troops, and officers without distinction, emphasizing the seriousness of their commitment. While her proposal is met with murmurs and somewhat embarrassed expressions from the officers, she maintains her resolve. The dream includes interactions with a staff doctor who understands her proposal and a moment of contemplation regarding the age difference between herself and her potential partners. Despite encountering laughter from officers, including one who had courted her in her youth, she insists on being directed to the chief physician to finalize arrangements, only to realize she doesn't know his name. The dream concludes with her climbing an endless staircase with a sense of duty.
The dream repeats itself with minor variations over a few weeks, suggesting its significance to the dreamer. It reflects her unconscious desires, anxieties, and conflicts, possibly related to her role as a caregiver for her child and her feelings of duty and responsibility. The dream may also symbolize her need for validation, her concerns about aging, and her desire for connection or recognition. Overall, the dream provides insights into the dreamer's psyche and may serve as a starting point for psychoanalytic exploration and therapy.
Key phrases emphasized:
Layer 1: Responsibility of a caretaker The patient may be a mother
Details might be blurred
Ex: Details blurred: dream censorship because of the morals of the community
Types of censorship:
Resistances of unsettling dream interpretations are also a variance of dream censorship
Clinical example:
Note that the contents of the libido are completely independentof the superego. Lewd libidos does not necessarily mean intended thoughts of the same kind, although it is a common character of antipathies.
Other censorships:
These are now guaranteed by rules according to specific organizations. Ex, in China we have the Code of Ethics for Clinical and Counseling Psychology Work of the CPA.
Dreams are distorted by the censor, which can be disturbing to analytical work
Aside from dream censor, there are other distortions
Distortions:
Another path of interpretation: symbolic interpretation
Symbolic interpretation is an ancient technique
Translations can be done with only the dream and nothing else known
Symbolic interpretations are deeper than classical dream analysis. They are no magic tricks.
“The nature of the symbol relationship is a comparison”
Most symbolizations are of sexual characteristics.
This might be very unsettling but it is valid according to evolutionary psychology. Also, psychology is an academic subject so there’s nothing to be ashamed of. THIS IS ALSO THE CORE OF PSYCHOANALYTIC DREAM INTERPRETATION
Male genitals are represented by
Ex a flying dream sexual arousal as the stimulant
Female genitals are represented by
Ex eating a fruit longing for sexual intercourse
Genitals of different genders can be expressed as mixed
Others
Note that not all symbols symbolize sex. Some also symbolize pure gender, ex a cloak symbolizes a man, not masculine power.
All of these above can be proved using evolutionary psychology but beyond the scope of this book
Mastering censorship and symbolic representation is not yet adept in dream distortion (but enough to understand enough
To understand more:
Process of dream-work
“It is natural that the manifest dream should lose its importance for us. It must be a matter of indifference to us whether it is well composed or resolved into a series of disconnected single images. Even when its exterior seems to be significant, we know that it has been developed using dream distortion and may have as little organic connection with the inner content of the dream as the facade of an Italian church has with its structure and ground plan.”
While doing dream work:
Sigmund’s work has shown us that dream analysis can be a very powerful tool for investigating the dynamics between the id and the superego. In the following sections, he will also talk about the use of dream-works in the curing of neurosis(non-developmental neuron-cognitive disorders)
“Dream-work is a process of a very peculiar sort, the like of which has hitherto not been discovered in psychic life. These condensations, displacements, regressive translations of thoughts into pictures, are new discoveries which richly repay our efforts in the field of psychoanalysis. You will realize from the parallel to the dream-work, what connections psychoanalytic studies will reveal with other fields, especially with the development of speech and thought. You can only surmise the further significance of these connections when you hear that the mechanism of the dream structure is the model for the origin of neurotic symptoms.”
Dream analysis is not a job to take full occupation in. Sigmund suggested that dream analysis should only be used for fun and should be used along with other examinations in clinical situations. Neurosis, after all, is a very complex type of syndrome.
Dream analysis could be very very very boring. One good example is O. Rank’s analysis of a young girl, covering 76 pages.
There are different situations, and it’s noteworthy to know which is the best for dream analysis.
Clinical ExampleOn July 13, 1910, toward morning, I dreamed that I was bicycling down a street in Tübingen, when a brown Dachshund tore after me and caught me by the heel. A bit further on I get off, seat myself on a step, and begin to beat the beast, which has clenched its teeth tight. (I feel no discomfort from the biting or the whole scene.) Two elderly ladies are sitting opposite me and watching me with grins on their faces. Then I wake up and, as so often happens to me, the whole dream becomes perfectly clear to me in this moment of transition to the waking state.
“A man who spent the night with a woman describes his partner as one of those motherly natures whose desire for a child irresistibly breaks through during intercourse. The circumstances of their meeting, however, necessitated a precaution whereby the fertilizing discharge of semen is kept away from the womb. Upon awaking after this night, the woman tells the following dream:“An officer with a red cap follows her on the street. She flees from him, runs up the staircase, and he follows after her. Breathlessly she reaches her apartment and slams and locks the door behind her. He remains outside and as she looks through a peephole she sees him sitting outside on a bench and weeping.””
“Then someone broke into her house and she called in fright for a watchman. But the latter had gone companionably into a church together with two ‘beauties.’ A number of steps led up to the church. Behind the church was a hill, and on its crest a thick forest. The watchman was fitted out with a helmet, gorget and a cloak. He had a full brown beard. The two were going along peacefully with the watchman, had sack-like aprons bound around their hips. There was a path from the church to the hill. This was overgrown on both sides with grass and underbrush that kept getting thicker and that became a regular forest on the crest of the hill.”
“He is going for a walk with his father in some place which must be the Prater,[35] for one can see the rotunda and before it a smaller building to which is anchored a captive balloon, which, however, seems fairly slack. His father asks him what all that is for; he wonders at it himself but explains it to his father. Then they come to a courtyard in which there lies spread out a big sheet of metal. His father wants to break off a big piece of it for himself but first looks about him to see if anyone might see him. He says to him that all he needs to do is to tell the inspector and then he can take some without more ado. There are steps leading from this courtyard down into a pit, the walls of which are upholstered with some soft material rather like a leather armchair. At the end of this pit is a longish platform and then a new pit begins….”
Original Words:“The dreamer himself interprets as follows: “The rotunda is my genital, the balloon in front of it is my penis, of whose slackness I have been complaining.” Thus one may translate in more detail, that the rotunda is the posterior—a part of the body which the child regularly considers as part of the genital—while the smaller building before it is the scrotum. In the dream his father asks him what all that is for; that is to say, he asks the object and function of the genitals. It is easy to turn this situation around so that the dreamer is the one who does the asking. Since no such questioning of the father ever took place in real life, we must think of the thought of this dream as a wish or consider it in the light of a supposition, “If I had asked father for sexual enlightenment.” We will find the continuation of this idea in another place shortly.The courtyard, in which the sheet metal lies spread out, is not to be considered primarily as symbolical but refers to the father’s place of business. For reasons of discretion I have substituted the “sheet metal” for another material with which the father deals, without changing anything in the literal wording of the dream. The dreamer entered his father’s business and took great offense at the rather dubious practices upon which the profits depended to a large extent. For this reason the continuation of the above idea of the dream might be expressed as “if I had asked him, he would only have deceived me as he deceives his customers.” The dreamer himself gives us the second meaning of “breaking off the metal,” which serves to represent the commercial dishonesty. He says it means masturbation. Not only have we long since become familiar with this symbol, but the fact also is in agreement. The secrecy of masturbation is expressed by means of its opposite—"It can be safely done openly.” Again our expectations are fulfilled by the fact that masturbatory activity is referred to as the father’s, just as the questioning was in the first scene of the dream“. Upon being questioned he immediately gives the interpretation of the pit as the vagina on account of the soft upholstering of its walls. I will add arbitrarily that the “going down” like the more usual “going up” is meant to describe the sexual intercourse in the vagina.”
Back to the conclusion that the dreamworks transform the latent dream into another form of expression.
Deeper studies of dreamworks tell us valuable information about the rather unwon beginnings of our intellectual development.
Dreamworks reveals
Remember that infants can learn to speak as young as 1-2 years so actually, there are a lot more archaic remnants not found yet due to memory void.
The memory retains the important and discards the not
Childhood memories disguise-memories
Psychoanalytic treatment often calls for filling infantile memory gaps
In the same way, we recover missing items
Clinical Example
“The woman, whose dream is interpreted to mean that she would like to see her seventeen-year old daughter dead, discovers under our guidance that she in fact at one time entertained this wish. The child is the fruit of an unhappy marriage, which early ended in a separation. Once, while the child was still in the womb, and after a tense scene with her husband, she beat her body with her fists in a fit of anger, in order to kill the child. How many mothers who to-day love their children tenderly, perhaps too tenderly, received them unwillingly, and at the time wished that the life within them would not develop further; indeed, translated this wish into various actions, happily harmless. The later death-wish against some loved one, which seems so strange, also has its origin in early phases of the relationship to that person.”
Therefore the daughter might have an infantile memory of being beaten
Q: Why should a death wish, so hidden away in the latent memory, be dreamed on?
A: In freudian psychoanalysis, the human nature is evil, which means that these theses are often dreamed on.
Love:
Rivalry
Childhood suppresses excessive sexual impulses, but sexual activities are developed/learned without outside influence.
One example of these suppressed impulses is intercourse with family members. There are evolution psychological theories that state that the offspring of family members will be not healthy.
Thus actually infantile consciousness is much more evil than we think.
The 13th chapter delves into the transformative nature of dreamworks, revealing insights into childhood experiences (infantilism) and primal desires (archaic libido). Memory voids conceal archaic remnants, impacting psychoanalytic treatment aiming to fill infantile memory gaps. The example illustrates hidden death wishes, reflecting Freudian views of human nature's latent evil.
Review Dreamwork consists essentially of the transposition of thoughts into a hallucinatory experience. The how is a problem of general psychology
How come there are painful contents in dreams?
“A good fairy promises a poor couple, husband and wife, to fulfill their first three wishes. They are overjoyed, and determine to choose their three wishes with great care. But the woman allows herself to be led astray by the odor of cooking sausages emanating from the next cottage, and wishes she had a couple of such sausages. Presto! they are there. This is the first wish-fulfillment. Now the husband becomes angry, and in his bitterness wishes that the sausages might hang from the end of her nose. This, too, is accomplished, and the sausages cannot be removed from their new location. So this is the second wish-fulfillment, but the wish is that of the husband. The wife is very uncomfortable because of the fulfillment of this wish. You know how the fairy tale continues. Since both husband and wife are fundamentally one, the third wish must be that the sausages be removed from the nose of the wife.”
The dreamer struggling against a wish might be compared to a summation of two separate people fighting
Case study The sausage fairy tale
Q Why must a dream be a wish fulfillment?
A 1. We don’t know. This is only a theory. 2. Not all dreams fit in but this formula works pretty well at most times 3. A warning and an evaluation of a situation can all be expressed as wish fulfillment.
Clinical Example from chapter 3 TODO: FIND CHAPTER WITH THIS Fl. 50 Kr. 1 example
Dreams also express curiosity
Dreams also express annoyance
Chapter 14 explores dreamwork and wish fulfillment in psychoanalytic theory. Dreams translate thoughts into experiences, yet painful contents can remain. Wish fulfillment aims for pleasure but can lead to contrary outcomes, as illustrated in the sausage fairy tale. Anxiety dreams fulfill suppressed wishes, while disturbances in wishes may indicate punishment fulfillment.
Let’s continue the subject of dreams before we touch on the most common doubts and uncertainties
In conclusion, dream analysis is often questioned on but is functional enough to work with.
Chapter 15 discusses doubts and criticisms regarding dream analysis in psychoanalytic theory. Interpretations are subjective, with multiple possibilities and potential errors. Some interpretations may seem forced or far-fetched, and even psychoanalysts may oppose dream analysis methods.
In this lecture, Freud introduced the neurosis and its similarity to the previous chapters.
Sometimes weird symptoms are going on with neurotic diseases:
Now I shall present to you the psychoanalytic conception of neurotic manifestations. The natural thing for me to do is to connect them to the phenomena we have previously treated, for the sake of their analogy as well as their contrast. I will select as symptomatic an act of frequent occurrence in my office hours. Of course, the analyst cannot do much for those who seek him in his medical capacity and lay the woes of a lifetime before him in fifteen minutes. His deeper knowledge makes it difficult for him to deliver a snap decision as do other physicians—"There is nothing wrong with you"—and to give the advice, “Go to a watering place for a while.” One of our colleagues, in answer to the question as to what he did with his office patients, said, shrugging his shoulders, that he simply “fines them so many kronen for their mischief-making.” So it will not surprise you to hear that even in the case of very busy analysts, the hours for consultation are not very crowded. I have had the ordinary door between my waiting room and my office doubled and strengthened by a covering of felt. The purpose of this little arrangement cannot be doubted. Now it happens over and over again that people who are admitted from my waiting room omit to close the door behind them; in fact, they almost always leave both doors open. As soon as I have noticed this I insist rather gruffly that he or she go back in order to rectify the omission, even though it be an elegant gentleman or a lady in all her finery. This gives an impression of misapplied pedantry. I have, in fact, occasionally discredited myself by such a demand, since the individual concerned was one of those who cannot touch even a door knob, and prefer as well to have their attendants spared this contact. But most frequently I was right, for he who conducts himself in this way, and leaves the door from the waiting room into the physician’s consultation room open, belongs to the rabble and deserves to be received inhospitably. Do not, I beg you, defend him until you have heard what follows. For the fact is that this negligence of the patient’s only occurs when he has been alone in the waiting room and so leaves an empty room “For the fact is that this negligence of the patient’s only occurs when he has been alone in the waiting room and so leaves an empty room behind him, never when others, strangers, have been waiting with him. If that latter is the case, he knows very well that it is in his interest not to be listened to while he is talking to the physician, and never omits to close both the doors with care.
The omission seems very predetermined
Assertion The motives of all symptomatic acts could be analyzed psychologically/psychiatrically.
Clinical Example
The narrative revolves around a well-preserved lady in her fifties, happily married for thirty years, whose blissful existence is shattered by an anonymous letter accusing her husband of infidelity. Despite their harmonious marriage and successful children, the accusation plunges her into a state of distress and suspicion. The catalyst for this turmoil is her chambermaid, who harbors envy towards a former schoolmate now working at her husband's factory. During a conversation with the maid about infidelity, the lady expresses her fear of her husband having a mistress, inadvertently planting the idea that manifests in the anonymous letter. Despite recognizing the maid's likely involvement, the lady is unable to shake off the doubt and confronts her husband, who denies the allegation. Although the maid is dismissed, the suspicion lingers, resurfacing whenever the accused woman is mentioned or seen. Despite efforts to rationalize and dismiss the accusations, the lady remains plagued by doubt and pain, unable to fully trust her husband or overcome the effects of the anonymous letter. This tale highlights the destructive power of baseless accusations and the lasting impact of mistrust on marital harmony, despite efforts to reconcile and move forward.
This is the background of the patient.
Endeavors of the psychiatrist:
Up till now, psychoanalysis offers the following benefits:
There are still other questions Ex
Q 1) Why could she be open to infatuation with her son-in-law? 2) And how come it projected itself upon the husband?
A 1) Biological question. Might be some sort of change of sexual desire. 2) This society is very resistant to this kind of relationship and thus this undergoes a projection that will soon be talked about in later lectures
| Psychiatry | Clinical Psychoanalysis |
|---|---|
| Physiologic examination | Techniques such as dream analysis |
| Based on biology/physiology | Based on psychoanalysis/Freudian theory |
| Works well in explaining neurosis from cellular biology | Works well in explaining neurosis in a whole |
Later on, more techniques will be introduced to transform psychoanalysis “into a therapeutic power.”
The lecture explores neuroses, linking them to previous topics. Freud discusses psychoanalytic views on symptomatic acts, illustrated by a patient's habitual door behavior, revealing subconscious motives. Psychoanalysis contrasts biological psychiatry, offering insights into neurotic behaviors for therapy development.
Review Clinical psychiatry does not deal with the form and the meaning of symptoms themselves, and this is exactly what psychoanalysis meant to do
The first cure of hysteria has been discovered by J. Breuer in the “study and felicitous cure of a case of hysteria which has since become famous (1880-82).” P. Janet has independently reached the same result.
Just like “America was not named after Columbus”, scholar Leuret expressed the opinion that “deliria of the insane, if we only understood how to interpret them, a meaning could be found”
Neurotic symptoms have their meanings just like errors and dreams.
Case Study Compulsion Neurosis (Neurotic OCD)
Chief symptoms
Modern-day psychiatry: offers classification, but no explanation
How could we identify the “degeneratity” of someone?
Psychiatry has defined superior degenerating as the category of neurosis when parts of the brain degrade.
Clinical Example 1
“A lady about thirty years old suffered from the most severe compulsions[…] She ran from her room into an adjoining one, placed herself in a definite spot beside a table which stood in the middle of the room, rang for her maid, gave her a trivial errand to do, or dismissed her without more ado, and then ran back again. This was certainly not a severe symptom of disease, but it still deserved to arouse curiosity.”
Explanation This requires cross-examination of the patient’s history.
“More than ten years prior she had married a man far older than herself, who had proved impotent on the bridal night. Countless times during the night he had run from his room to hers to repeat the attempt, but each time without success. In the morning he said angrily: “It is enough to make one ashamed before the maid who does the beds,” and took a bottle of red ink that happened to be in the room, and poured its contents on the sheet, but not on the place where such a stain would have been justifiable.”
Similarities The running across rooms and the appearance of the maid
Projections
The use of red ink implies the impotence of the man.
The compulsion act then says “No, it is not true, he did not have to be ashamed before the maid, he was not impotent”
After a series of dreams, her brain thinks that dreams can no longer fulfill her wishes and begins to start acting them out for her husband
Therefore a compulsive act could also be a wish fulfillment
Clinical Example 2
“A nineteen-year old, well-developed, gifted girl, an only child, who was superior to her parents in education and intellectual activity, had been wild and mischievous in her childhood, but has become very nervous during the last years without any apparent outward cause. She is especially irritable with her mother, always discontented, depressed, has a tendency toward indecision and doubt, and is finally forced to confess that she can no longer walk alone on public squares or wide thoroughfares.”
Explanation
We shall not consider her condition as a whole. According to classical psychiatry, there are two symptoms dominant: agoraphobia and compulsion neurosis. In this example, we will analyze her as if “this girl has also developed a sleep ritual, under which she allows her parents to suffer much discomfort.”
Everyone is under a sleep ritual(an obsession), and the absence hinders one from falling asleep(to fulfill a wish)
Background Information: The patient needs an absolutely quiet space to sleep, but wants the passage between her room and her parents’ half open.
The way of banishing clocks from the room is because it’s a symbol of the female genital(yes, sex symbols are still useful)
The ticking of the clock may be compared to the throbbing of the genital during sexual excitement
the banishing might be an attempt to avoid this sensation
avoiding the fear that “she might not bleed during her bridal night and so not prove to be a virgin.”
Other actions could also be explained in the same way Ex her engagement with her father could be inferred
Conclusion Clinical psychoanalysis is much harder than it seems. But it will all make sense once you’ve peeled the case like an onion.
In psychoanalysis, symptoms carry meaning. Illustrated through clinical examples like compulsive acts and agoraphobia, deeper interpretations reveal subconscious desires and fears, highlighting the complexity of clinical psychoanalysis.
Review In the last example, both patients seem to be fixed on some places of their past
Case Study - Traumatic Neuroses
Men are brought to complete deadlock by traumatic experiences
The connection between the compulsion act and the fixation is often hidden
Neurotic symptoms are not themself unconscious but they were just not observed by the conscious mind by some sort of censorship
Even adding to the difficulties of interpretations, “the meaning of the symptoms invariably hidden in the unconscious; but the very existence of the symptom is conditioned by its relation to this unconscious.”
Symptoms develop as a substitution for something else that has remained suppressed
Similar to how ignorance led to evil in the Socratic teachings, ignorance of unconscious impulses in psychoanalysis contributes to psychological issues
Therefore Freud expresses a strong dislike for the simplification of the truth
“All pathogenic unconscious experience must be transposed into consciousness”
Note that the unconscious fixation does not necessarily mean amnesia
Traumatic fixation in neuroses involves unconscious fixation on past events. Symptoms mask underlying traumas, akin to Socratic teachings where ignorance leads to psychological issues.
In the process of understanding neuroses, there are things that we need to know something about the patient’s reaction.
The patient often resists help from the analyst just like how someone resists the dentist who is going to pull one’s teeth.
It’s better not to mention this to the relatives for they might think it’s an excuse for the failure of the treatment
One could scarcely find any patient who doesn’t attempt to defend himself against the “intrusion of psychoanalytic therapy”
Clinical Example
“One patient, whom I must reckon among the most highly intelligent, thus concealed an intimate love relation for weeks; and when he was asked to explain this infringement of our inviolable rule, he defended his action with the argument that he considered this one thing was his private affair. ”
In this example, the patient is trying to escape from the interrogation of the therapist by using the excuse that his relationships should be kept as his privacy.
Compulsion neurotics are “exceedingly adept” at this by “bringing to bear all their over-conscientiousness and their doubts upon it.”
There is another curious thing about resistance. The patient’s wish to learn psychoanalysis for self-interpretation is also a resistance. This is because the patient is unconsciously trying to lead the analysis session.
This is the same as the transference of a familiar person onto the therapist, which reduces interest in the analytic session.
Always remember that the patient’s resistance against treatment is the same cause of the neurosis
There are also cases where the establishment of the resistance becomes a matter of such importance that the therapist cannot ignore/divert it. This can also provide insight into the patient’s hobbies.
“We will compare the system of the unconscious to a large ante-chamber, in which the psychic impulses rub elbows with one another, as separate beings. There opens out of this ante-chamber another, a smaller room, a sort of parlor, which consciousness occupies. But on the threshold between the two rooms, there stands a watchman; he passes on the individual psychic impulses, censors them, and will not let them into the parlor if they do not meet with his approval. You see at once that it makes little difference whether the watchman brushes a single impulse away from the threshold, or whether he drives it out again after it has already entered the parlor. It is a question here only of the extent of his watchfulness, and the timeliness of his judgment.”
The watchman suppresses some part of the conscious mind - some sort of like the dream censorship
Not all unconscious ideas could be mapped onto the conscious one
Note that this is a very crude theory that has absolutely no evidence supporting it. It’s only that it’s working in most cases so that therapists use them, but this theory still lacks verification.
Resistance in psychoanalysis refers to patients' reluctance to accept therapeutic insights, mirroring unconscious defenses. Suppression, akin to dream censorship, filters unconscious impulses from reaching consciousness. Patients' wish to learn psychoanalysis can also manifest resistance.
Almost all hysteria could be interpreted as sexual.
Elements that contain
According to evolutionary psychology, the origin of sexual desire is the desire to reproduce.
Reproduction desire sexual desire Eros abnormal sexual orientation.
The distortion often happens during childhood
This type of distortion is often called paraphilia disorder. These include:
The studies of Ivan Bloch have shown that these “signs of degeneration” are now widely accepted by society
Neurotic symptoms are also substitutions for sexual satisfaction. Paranoia, on the other hand, is an attempt to ward off powerful homosexual tendencies.
Symptoms of hysteria may manifest its symptoms anywhere in the body.
Many violence-related hysteria is an remapping of sadistic sexual desire
Note that children also have sexual behaviors, but most are corrected during puberty from distortions.
Ex the act of sucking the sucking at one’s mother’s breast for milk
Then the children soon relinquishes the sucking and turned it into sucking one’s thumb the exploration of one’s body onanism
Hysteria often stems from sexual interpretations, including distortions in sexual object and aim, with neurotic symptoms potentially substituting for sexual satisfaction; children exhibit sexual behaviors that evolve with age.
Previous lectures have not been focused on perversions to the conception of sexuality
The perversions are an alteration to our conception of sexuality.
Note that the adjective sexual could also apply to elements that relate to anything that relates to reproduction Ex nursing
Ex kissing could be claimed to be perverse since it originated from the union of two organs. This can explain why there are paraphilia who experience sexual orgasms when kissing.
Note that infantile sexuality and perversions are completely different.
Q Why do we focus on the pursuit of sexual pleasure rather than the neurotic physiological reason behind the thumb sucking?
A Just like an apple and a pear are different from the time they are seeds, the desire to reproduce is hard-coded in one’s genes. It can’t be ignored.
The most noticeable sexual development occurs during the 6-8th grade during the start of puberty. During this period, the sexual cognitive functions(or, simply, sexual life) of a teenager are pretty much the same as the ones of the adults.
The concept of masculine and feminine is not present yet but in its place active and passive.
The oral phase and the anal phase are the ones present at the first time, with the oral phase exiting at first.
The oral phase started when the infant learned to suck milk from the mother’s breast, fulfilling the self-preservation actions term in Freudian libido. Then the wish turned into a sexual desire, and the oral impulse turned auto-erotic. The mother then becomes the first object of love.
The Oedipus-complex is formed during this stage. Even after the development of the superego when the ma is detached from the complex, he will still experience a feeling of guilt which he couldn’t find the source. This complex is later on suppressed by the evolutionary resistance of inbreeding.
Incorrect suppression of the Oedipus-complex during development leads to sorts of neurosis.
Lectures have shifted focus to perversions, altering the concept of sexuality. Even acts like kissing are analyzed. Infantile sexuality differs from adult perversions.
During puberty, sexual development accelerates. Pre-genital sexual stages involve oral and anal phases, forming attachments to the mother. Suppression of the Oedipus complex leads to neurosis.
The lectures examine sexual perversions, altering our understanding of sexuality. From infancy to puberty, stages of sexual development involve attachments to the mother and the emergence of the Oedipus complex, affecting later psychological development.
Libido went through extensive development before it could “enter the service of reproduction in a way which may be regarded as normal”
Some aspects of development are interesting to psychoanalysis.
Ex
During a study on the nervous system of a small fish very archaic in form, Freud noticed that the nerve ganglia of the fish had moved outside the grey matter all the way to the spinal ganglion. This implies that the these are archaic structures.
These are called the fixation of the instinct.
Regression is the “second danger of this development by stages.” Regression are archaic remnant for protection during youth, so therefore regression has a lot of connections are fixation on instincts.
Note that suppression is not the same as regression. Suppression is totally localized.
In hysteria, libidinous return to primary, incestuous sexual objects is quite regular but regression to “a former stage of sexual organization [is] very rare.”
“the union of the partial instincts under the domination of the genitals is accomplished, but its results encounter the opposition of the fore-conscious system which, of course, is bound up with consciousness.”
In contrast, compulsion-neurosis often returns to the sadistico-anal organization. So the compulsion idea must be reinterpreted. Ex “I want to murder you” “I want to enjoy you in love”
These compulsion thoughts are often directed toward one’s nearest and dearest ones
“You can imagine with what horror the patient thinks of these compulsion ideas and how alien they appear to his conscious perception.”
In short, the removal of the possibility to satisfy one’s libido results in a neurotic illness.
The ego expresses denied gratifications of the libido.
“Denial is very rarely complete and absolute; to cause a pathological condition, the specific gratification desired by the particular person in question must be withheld, the certain satisfaction of which he alone is capable.”
Sexual desires are highly plastic so a complete deformation(neurotic symptoms) of it is rare.
Sexual desire includes:
In a society, one must relinquish either the goal of partial gratification or the goal of reproduction. At this point, something else swaps in that “is no longer sexual but must be termed social”
This process of perversion is called sublimation. It is an example of a map from a sexual desire to a non-sexual desire.
Then here’s the debate of whether exogenous/endogenous diseases are the product of traumatic fixation or libido fixation? Or the pressure of forbearance(as in anxiety disorders)?
Two extreme possibilities:
The libido expresses adhesiveness. This is why the history of the perversion can be traced back to the infantile period.
When the original libido is thrown away another takes its place.
Clinical Example
“A man, to whom the genital and all other sex stimuli of woman now mean nothing, who in fact can only be thrown into an irresistible sexual excitation by the sight of a shoe on a foot of a certain form, is able to recall an experience he had in his sixth year, which proved decisive for the fixation of his libido.”
“One day he sat on a stool beside his governess, who was to give him an English lesson. She was an old, shriveled, unbeautiful girl with washed-out blue eyes and a pug nose, who on this day, because of some injury, had put a velvet slipper on her foot and stretched it out on a footstool; the leg itself she had most decorously covered. After a diffident attempt at normal sexual activity, undertaken during puberty, such a thin sinewy foot as his process which we shall consider later. The rejected libidinous desires manage to have their own way, through circuitous byways, but not without catering to the objections through the observance of certain symptom-formation; the symptoms are the new or substitute satisfaction which the condition of self-denial has made necessary.”
This study does not necessarily mean that psychoanalysis does not study anything aside from the non-sexual psyche.
Ex When libido is fixed the ego undergoes suppression
Anyway, the third factor of the etiology: the tendency to conflict, “upon which the development both of the ego and libido are dependent.”
Clinical Example
“The janitor’s daughter, who, despite her five or six years of age, has had occasion to make observations on the sexuality of adults, probably played the part of the seducer. These experiences, even though they be of short duration, are sufficient to set in motion certain sexual impulses in both children, which continue in the form of onanism for several years after the common games have ceased.”
The dynamics between the id/libido and socializing with others are regulated by the principle of pleasure. This is how evolution brought sexual pleasure.
The transition from the pleasure principle to that of factual decision is the most important advancement in the development of the ego.
⠀Overall, the note delves into the complexities of libido development, regression, and the conflicts between the ego and sexual desires, shedding light on fundamental aspects of psychoanalytic theory.
The symptoms show the nature of the disease. The cure removes the symptoms(Of course this left the capacity to build new symptoms.
The symptoms are things that are detrimental to life.
Review symptoms are conflicts aroused by a new form of gratifying the libido. The two forces opposing are the unsatisfied libido, frustrated by the other force reality and needs another outlet.
In the case of normal development, the passage to perversion could be broken sharply by the resistance of the ego.
But the ego controls not only the consciousness but also the approach to motor innervation, and hence the realization of psychic impulses.
If the ego disapproves of the perversion, then the conflict takes place. Libido, nowhere to hide, needs an outlet, so it withdraws from the ego and perverts. So then at least it could gratify itself in some way.
However, this could no longer be described as a genuine satisfaction.
This is how a symptom appears.
Q How can the libido force its way through the suppression?
A The libido had given up the childish objects, and now it regathers them. On the first hand, the instinctive tendencies of childhood were brought up, and environmental influences are awakening the other ones.
Therefore, the causation of the neurosis =
Let’s go back to the conclusion that analytic investigation of neurotics shows that the libido is bound up with the infantile sexual experiences of the patient.
We approach the opposite conclusion with the previous one: “Experiences of the libido had no importance whatever in their own time, but rather acquired it at the time of regression”.
The decision on which one to choose is not difficult. The libido is definitely linked with infantile experiences, and it is greatly impacted by regression. As well, other considerations should also be taken into account.
These relations have been a big interest of pedagogy that prevents childhood neuroses.
Symptoms serve as substitutes for the gratification of the regressed libido.
This does not mean that the subject is gratified.
Ex “The same child that sucked the milk with such voracity from its mother’s breast is apt to show a strong antipathy for milk a few years later, which is often difficult to overcome. ”
The patient might be insulted that he has been wasting all his time over this “nonsense”
There are also cases Freud analyzed that he said need “worthy of special treatment”: observation of parental intercourse, seduction by an adult, and the threat of castration.
The experience of observing parental intercourse(sometimes even animal intercourse) or the memory of being seduced might cause curiosity. This causes something that is a sort of autoeroticism, and when they are expressed, there is often a threat of castration sort of like the castration complex.
Through this “castration-threat” act the child learned about the female genital.
So at this point our picture of a boy’s development during 0-10 years old is based on the fact that the libido learns a way to release itself. This also causes daydreams.
Art is also a form of perverse libido exhibition.
The note explores the intricate relationship between libido development, symptom manifestation, and psychological conflicts within the individual. Symptoms are portrayed as manifestations of unresolved conflicts between the unsatisfied libido and the constraints of reality. Freud delves into the causation of symptoms, emphasizing the role of the ego's resistance and the subsequent withdrawal of libido into symptoms. He argues that neuroses arise from a combination of disposition, accidental experiences, sexual constitution, and infantile experiences, with regression playing a pivotal role. Freud also discusses the influence of childhood experiences, such as witnessing parental intercourse or experiencing seduction, on later psychological development and symptom formation. Through these analyses, he underscores the significance of understanding the complexities of libido development and its impact on psychological well-being.