Introduction
Psychology is a branch of science in which there is studying of behavior and mental processes. It can also be defined as the study of the mind and behavior of human beings. It is the application of knowledge in the study of human activity such as the day to day lives and mental illness.
Psychotherapy, on the other hand, can be defined as the treatment of patients by influencing their mental life. It differs from psychiatry in that; the former is the treatment of mental illness while psychiatry is the treatment of mental diseases. Of course, to a certain extent, mental illness too, is open to mental treatment; but definitely many diseases of the mind lie exclusively beyond the reach of psychotherapy.
The treatment of mental illnesses by influencing the mind has been in existence for quite along time, but it has attained at various times very different degrees of importance. This paper will look at psychoanalytic theory as a method of treatment of mental illness; it will also give a brief history of how the theory came into being, explain some of the criticism that have been attributed to the theory and conclude by giving its application.
History of Psychoanalytic Theory
The theory of psychoanalytic was first developed by Sigmund Freud. He is one of the ancient psychologists. He was born in 1856 (in Freiberg). His family was full of confusion and complexity which inspired him to study the individual mind. His mother was the third wife. In 1900, his father died. This was the time he had involved himself in intense work and was inspired to publish the books called The Interpretation of Dream and Psychopathology of Everyday life (Eysenck, 1994).
Freud is often referred to as the father of psychology because of his research in the area of psychology. He carried out researches to study people’s thought concerning the world and themselves. The aim of his research was to “agitate the sleep of mankind”. He was successful in his research and founded a new field of psychology and managed to create a new individual’s scientific conception.
Freud developed a theory describing the organization and internal operations of human minds. This theory was called the psychoanalysis. The aim of this theory was to study the psychological functioning of human beings and their behavior. Three applications are used in this theory (i.e. investigation of the human mind and thoughts, study of human behavior, and treatment of emotional illness).
Fraud established clinical procedures that would be used to treat mentally ill persons. According to him, individual personality is developed from childhood experiences. The aim of this therapy was to convey reserved thoughts and mind-set into consciousness in order to free the patient from suffering recurring fuzzy emotions. These reserved thoughts and feelings are brought to consciousness by encouraging a conversation between the doctor and the patient. Patients are encouraged to talk freely and express their dreams and experiences (LaBerge, Kahan, & Levitan, 1995).
Description of Psychoanalytic Theory
According to Freud, psychoanalysis is a procedure used to treat the medically ill individuals. He called it “The doctor’s ‘treatment’ and it involves eliciting repressed memories from the patient by interpreting the responses to his questions” (Asiado, 2007). He observed that a psychologically ill individual would be encouraged to re-live (previous) experience and this would be employed as a mode of treatment.
Psychoanalysis is a direct involvement between the analyst and the patient. This practice aids patients to find out and determine reserved conflicts (principally the early-childhood conflicts with the close relatives). In the psyche, “the interpretation of Dreams”, Freud proposes that dreams could be employed in demonstrating the judgment of the ‘unconscious mind’. He described dreams as the noble road to the unconscious. In the unconscious mind painful memories are repressed but can be accessed through psychoanalysis treatment.
In the course of being awake, there is deriving of this model basically from the sensory input. The secondary input offers the information that is most current about the conditions that are prevailing presently and the secondary basis from information that is motivational and contextual. At the time one is asleep, there is very minimal (sensory) input. Consequently, the dreams that people have are under the determination of their fears, their hopes, and their expectations. From this stand point, dreaming can be taken to be a unique case of perception (LaBerge, Kahan, & Levitan, 1995).
On the other hand, perception can be viewed as the case that is extraordinary of dreaming under the restraints of (sensory) input. From either way a person may view this, having an understanding of dreaming is core to having the understanding of consciousness. The theory involves intervention such as confronting and illuminating the patient’s pathological suspicions, desires and guilt. Through analysis of individual’s conflicts, psychoanalysis treatment can be used to prove that patients’ unconsciousness is the worst threat of causing symptoms. Fraud’s theory can be split into five major parts i.e. economic, developmental among others.
The dynamic part of the conjecture concerns the patient’s (instinctual) forces. Fraud confirmed that, a patient’s instincts can be grouped into two major instincts that is the Eros or sexual instinct and the antagonistic instinct. Although these instincts work together, in some instances, they work against each other.
Criticisms of the Theory
The study of psychology is subjective rather than objective and can not always be relied upon for the prediction of human behavior. For example it becomes had to define a disorder and to distinguish some one who has it from one who does not. The validity of Freud’s procedure is questionable and has been criticized by other psychologist and scientists. The doctor’s treatment as defined by Freud seems to be strange because the doctor and the patient hold conversations only with nothing passing between them.
Moreover, the doctor’s interpretation is not objective or testable. However, Freud’s treatment has been popular and has some logic in it. For example he observed that individual personality is understood by interpreting a description of childhood experiences (Asiado 2007). There have been claims that such interpretation has some truth about the patient. Claims has also been put forward that both the interpretation and the conversation processes can be employed in the effective management of nervous ailments.
Another common criticism in psychoanalytic is the criticisms of artificiality. This refers to the state of imitation or lack of naturalness in the human behavior. It can be defined as the state of making judgment without taking into consideration the needs of a particular situation or person. There is an inconsistency between internal and external validity of research in psychology. Internal validity refers to the ability of making casual conclusions after carrying out a research. In most cases these results are replicable and vigorous. On the other hand, external validity refers to the likelihood of oversimplify conclusion based on the situation that incited the research.
Ortmann & Hertwig (2002) observed that, in psychology, research is based more on the internal validity and less on the external validity. This is not the case in field experiments where a position is held between the two findings. However, they also noticed that there has been an increase in the recognition of field experiments which has created an interest in the external validity of laboratory experiments. A major obstacle to the external validity of an experiment is the artificiality of the setting. If the laboratory institutions and incentives do not sufficiently mirror those outside-the- laboratory situation they intend to study, the loss of external validity may be significant.
The criticisms of artificiality can be applied in other sub disciplines of psychology such as abnormal psychology, social psychology and organizational psychology. Abnormal psychology is based on arguments against specific applications that do not reflect any objection to human experiments. Artificiality affects such findings and does not give a clear picture of the human behavior. Social psychology is affected in that, a lot of imitation affects human’s social life because of demise of their originality. Lack of naturalness and originality affects the organizational structures not only in the work place but also in the community.
Other professionals criticized the theory as being too simple to explain the complexity in the human mind. They argue that, the human mind is too complex to be understood by just the use pf psychoanalysis. However, this criticism is not true because psychoanalytic theories of personality have proven to be strongly heuristic. Thousands of studies have either tested some psychoanalytic suggestions or have extended psychoanalytic theory into new areas.
It is probable that, psychoanalytic theory has motivated more research than any other theory of personality. If one decisive factor of the advantage of the theory is heuristic, then psychoanalytic theory has more than pleased this test. Moreover, converse to the view of many critics, a significant number of psychoanalytic proposals have been found to be constant with experimental results. There is much more scientific worth in psychoanalytic theories of personality than critics have approved (Suite, et al 2007).
Practical Application
Talking about dream interpretation and symbolism, dreams may serve as very strong sources of information that can change one’s life if close attention is paid to the meanings which these dreams have. The interpretation of dreams as well as analyzing the symbols of dreams gives out some clues in regard to a person’s life that could never be seen otherwise. The interpretation of dreams calls for an intuition that is well developed in order to get clearly the meanings of these dreams and carry out the analysis of those messages that are hidden in these dreams (Hook, 1990). This is for the reason that the dreams are just the same way as individual as human beings themselves.
To investigate the epistemological base of the psychoanalytic theory of dreams entails that we first spell out some concepts that are basic to this issue. These basic concepts include justification, meaning and truth. First, concerning justification, we must understand exactly what comprise an adequate for justification to the psychoanalytic theory and what forms of justification have been applied in the course of the development of psychoanalysis.
Similar to the concept of justification, the notion of meaning must be distinguished. For the application of Freud dream analysis to be effective, one has to understand what is meant by “meaning” and what Freud meant. There are diverse forms of explanation and many meanings to meaning within psychoanalysis (Hook, 1990).
It would be a blunder to consider psychoanalysis as an amalgamated discipline. Psychoanalysis is better considered as a group of unified ideas, theories, and observations that interrelate in multifaceted ways. The extensive assortment of depiction of human psychological life, the classifying of those remarks and their simplification are called the clinical theory of psychoanalysis (Suite, et al 2007). They explain how people mind function psychologically, in a manner close to normal experience and use language close to common speech. In the scrutiny of many psychoanalysts, clinical theory comprises the major contribution of the field.
The major hullabaloos within psychoanalysis have concerned the emphasis that should be given to each of the various viewpoints that come out from the close study of the productions of patients in analysis rather than whether or not any of them is outstanding, for example Freud analysts concentrate more to the emotional struggles that consequence from the young child’s wish for erotic enjoyment and the doubts linked with that wish. On the other hand, self psychologists center their attention on the experience of a consistent and dynamic self and the intimidation to that experience.
Conclusion
Psychotherapy can be defined as the treatment that is used to cure people suffering from mental illness. One example of psychotherapy treatment is psychoanalysis theory. The treatment of mental illnesses by influencing the mind has been in existence for quite along time, but it has attained at various times very different degrees of importance. It is a direct involvement between the analyst and the patient. This procedure assists the sick individuals in establishing and resolving reserved conflicts particularly the early-childhood conflicts that occur between children and their guardians.
This theory was developed by Freud after the death of his father. He was brought up in a confused family which inspired him to study the human mind and behavior. According to him, dreams interpretation can be used to treat mental illnesses. He observed that dreams can be used to demonstrate the judgment of the unconscious mind. He described dreams as the noble road to the unconscious. In the unconscious mind painful memories are repressed but can be accessed through psychoanalysis treatment.
Psychoanalysis has been criticized by other psychologists and scientist for its luck of validity. They argue that the human mind is so complex that it cannot be understood by a mere psychoanalysis. They also argue that, Freud model consider conversations between the doctor and the patient without anything passing between which is not efficient in treating mental illness.
Reference List
Asiado, T. (2007). Sigmund Freud and His Couch.
Eysenck, M. W. (1994). Perspectives on psychology, principles of psychology. Philadelphia: Psychology Press.
Hook, S. (1990). Psychoanalysis, scientific method, and philosophy. New York: Transaction Publishers.
LaBerge, S., Kahan, T. & Levitan, L. (1995). Cognition in dreaming and waking. Sleep Research, 24A, 239
Ortmann, A., and R. Hertwig, 2002: “The Costs of Deception: Evidence from Psychology”; Experimental Economics, 5: 111-132.
Suite, D. H., et al (2007, August).Beyond misdiagnosis, misunderstanding and mistrust: Relevance of the historical perspective in the medical and mental health treatment of people of color. Journal of the National Medical Association, 99(8), 879.