Editing Psychoanalysis (section)

== Overview ==
[[File:Freuds structural model of psyche.png|thumb|right|300px|Freud's structural or three-instance model, referring to his rider metaphor: The human head symbolizes the ''ego'', the animal body the ''id''. Dualistic in an analogue way, the libidinal energy branches out from the id into two main areas: upwards, the mental urge to know, and downwards, the bodily urge to act. Both are bundled into actions in the ego in order to fulfil the id's needs. This includes perception and judgement of inner and outer reality, leading to experiences (by muscle control), which the superego internalises via [[Imprinting (psychology)|neuronal imprinting]]. The superego contains the socialisation that takes place during childhood. If it complement the instincts of the id, the organism remains mentally healthy  –  the 'rider' carries out the will of his 'animal' "as if it were his own."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Freud |first=Sigmund |title=The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume XIX (1923–26) ''The Ego and the Id and Other Works'' |publisher=Hogarth Press |others=Strachey, James, Freud, Anna, Rothgeb, Carrie Lee, Richards, Angela, Scientific Literature Corporation |year=1978 |isbn=0701200677 |location=London |pages=19 |oclc=965512}}</ref>]]

One of Freud's central arguments is that the contents of the unconscious largely determine [[cognition]] and [[Human behavior|behaviour]], describing this as ''the third [[:de:Kränkungen der Menschheit|insult to mankind]].'' While the first is said to consist of the ''<nowiki/>'cosmic''' scandal triggered by [[Nicolaus Copernicus|Copernicus]], th''e'' second as ''biological'' one by [[Charles Darwin|Darwin's]] realisation that man evolved in line of all animals, the narcissistically affected ego now has to cope with the ''psychological'' affront that it is not even master of its own house.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Freud |first1=Sigmund |title=Eine Schwierigkeit der Psychoanalyse |date=1917 |url=https://archive.org/stream/eineschwierigkei29097gut/pg29097.txt}}</ref> <ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Blass |first1=Rachel B. |last2=Carmeli |first2=Zvi |date=February 2007 |title=The case against neuropsychoanalysis. On fallacies underlying psychoanalysis' latest scientific trend and its negative impact on psychoanalytic discourse |url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17244565 |journal=The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis |volume=88 |issue=Pt 1 |pages=19–40 |doi=10.1516/6nca-a4ma-mfq7-0jtj |issn=0020-7578 |pmid=17244565}}</ref>

Freud found that many of the drives – which his [[Id, ego and superego|structural model]] locates in the ‘id’ – are repressed into the unconscious as a result of traumatic experiences during childhood, so that attempts to integrate them into the conscious perception of the ego triggers [[Resistance (psychoanalysis)|resistance]]. These and other [[Defence mechanism|defense mechanisms]] ‘want’ to maintain the [[Repression (psychoanalysis)|repression]] – not least with the means of censorship, internalised fear of punishment or mother-love withdrawal – while the affected instincts resist.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Erdelyi |first=Matthew Hugh |date=October 2006 |title=The unified theory of repression |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/abs/unified-theory-of-repression/A3AF46FD97E61A4B2C86BCE544613B28 |journal=Behavioral and Brain Sciences |language=en |volume=29 |issue=5 |pages=499–511 |doi=10.1017/S0140525X06009113 |pmid=17156548 |issn=0140-525X}}</ref> All in all, an inner war rages between the [[Id (psychology)|id]] and the [[Ego psychology|ego's]] conscious values, which manifests itself in more or less conspicuous mental disorders, whereby Freud did not equate the statistical normality of our society with ‘healthy’. "Health can only be described in [[Metapsychology|metapsychological]] terms" (assessment of each psychic process according to the coordinates of biological drive ''economy'', ''dynamics'' and ''topology'').<ref>{{cite book |last1=Freud |first1=Sigmund |url=https://www.fischerverlage.de/buch/sigmund-freud-werke-aus-den-jahren-1932-1939-9783104001661 |title=Die endliche und die unendliche Analyse |date=1937 |publisher=S. Fischer |pages=Gesammelte Werke, Band XVI, 57–99}}</ref>

He discovered that the instinctive impulses are expressed most clearly – albeit still encoded – in the symbols of [[Dream interpretation#Freud|dreams]] as well as in the [[symptom]]atic detours of [[Neurosis|neuroticism]] and [[Freudian slip]]s. Psychoanalysis was developed in order to clarify the [[Causality|causes]] of disorders and to restore mental health<ref name="Zoja_1983">{{cite journal |vauthors=Zoja L |date=1983 |title=Working against Dorian Gray: analysis and the old |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1465-5922.1983.00051.x?sid=nlm%3Apubmed |journal=J Anal Psychol |volume=28 |issue=1 |pages=51–64 |doi=10.1111/j.1465-5922.1983.00051.x |pmid=6826461|url-access=subscription }}</ref> by enabling the ego to become aware of the id's needs and to find realistic, self-controlled ways to satisfy them. Freud summarised this goal of his therapy in the demand "Where id was, ego shall became", defining the underlying libido as driving energy of all innate needs and equating it with the [[Eros (concept)|Eros]] (universal desire) of [[Platonic philosophy]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Freud |first1=Sigmund |title=Neue Folge der Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse |date=1933 |page=31. Vorlesung: Die Zerlegung der psychischen Persönlichkeit}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Freud |first1=Sigmund |title=Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse |pages=99}}</ref>

=== Oedipus rising ===
[[File:Prehistoric politics among groups of hunter-gatherers.jpg|thumb|Illustration of how three autarchic hunter-gatherer hordes began to form a political inter-group organisation already at the early Neolithic period. According to [[Klaus Schmidt (archaeologist)|K. Schmid]]t, this kind of united labour was necessary to erect monuments like those at [[Göbekli Tepe]] (cf. ''C. Renfrew'').<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Renfrew |first=Colin |date=January 1984 |title=The Megalith-Cultures |journal=Scientific American |volume=1}}</ref> The same precondition (united working groups) he sees with regard to the onset of agriculture in Mesopotamia.<ref name="Klaus Schmidt">{{cite web |last1=Linsmeier |first1=Klaus-Dieter |author-link=Klaus Schmidt (archaeologist) |date=2024-12-30 |title=Eine Revolution im großen Stil |url=https://www.spektrum.de/magazin/eine-revolution-im-grossen-stil/836862 |website=spektrum.de}}</ref> This is the mythical Garden of [[:de:Eden_(Mesopotamien)|Eden]], where, is said, the gods created humans to pacify an internal political conflict (cf. [[Atra-Hasis]]). |434x434px]]

Freud attached great importance to [[Coherence theory of truth|coherence]] of his [[Structural model of the psyche|structural model]]. The metapsychological specification of the functions and interlocking of the three instances was intended to ensure the full connectivity of this ‘psychic apparatus’ with biological sciences, in particular Darwin's theory of evolution of species, including [[Human evolution|mankind]] with his natural behaviour, thinking ability and technological creativity. Such model of health is indispensable for the [[Diagnosis|diagnostic]] process (''sickness'' can only be realised as a deviation from the optimal cooperation of all mental-organic functions), but Freud had to be modest. He came to the conclusion that he had to leave his metapsychological-based model of the soul in the unfinished state of a ''[[torso]]''<ref>{{cite book |last1=Freud |first1=Sigmund |title=Gesammelte Werke. Bd. 14. Selbstdarstellung |pages=85}}</ref> because – as he stated one last time in [[Moses and Monotheism]] – there was no well-founded [[primate research]] in the first half of 20th century.<ref name="Sigmund Freud: Der Mann Moses und d">{{cite book |last1=Freud |first1=Sigmund |title=Sigmund Freud: Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion |pages=180 (Kapitel 3, Abschnitt C)}}</ref> Without knowledge of the instinctively formed group structure of our genetically [[Gombe Chimpanzee War|closest relatives]] in animal kingdom (instead of Freud's single ‘super-strong primal father’, they show highly social, combative male teams, but despite their remarkable intelligence still no ability to form political inter-group organisations<ref>{{Cite AV media |author=((Doku world717)) |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9m04M87ltI&ab_channel=Dokuworld717 |title=Doku Kampf der Kriegeraffen |trans-title=Documentary: Battle of the Warrior Apes |date=2021-09-05 |via=YouTube |access-date=2025-04-03}}{{dead link|date=April 2025|reason=video taken down due to copy right}}</ref>), his thesis of the ''Darwinian primordial horde'' as presented for discussion in ''[[Totem and Taboo]]'' cannot be tested and, where necessary, replaced by a realistic model.

Darwin's horde life and its abolition through the introduction of monogamy (as a political agreement between the sons who murdered the horde's [[polygamous]] forefather) embodies the evolutionary and cultural-historical core of psychoanalysis. The aspect of violent elimination of natural horde life is decisive for Freud's ''[[Civilization and Its Discontents|Unease in Culture]]''; his assumption of the outbreak of the Oedipus complex in human history is based on it. It led to the formulation of rules of behaviour such as the prohibition of adultery and incest, and thus to the beginning of [[Totemism|totemic cultures]]. Manifested in this kind of customs, traditions and ritual education, some of them changed through intermediate stage of [[feudalism]] to modern nations, endowed with their monotheism (which centralised the [[Polytheism|diversity of totems]] in an abstract omnipotent singel deity), power-hierarchical structures of military, trade and politics (s. [[Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego]]).

Freud's thesis of the violent introduction of monogamous cohabitation stands<ref>{{Cite book |last=Freud |first=Sigmund |title=Group psychology and the analysis of the ego |orig-date=1921 |publisher=[[W. W. Norton & Company]] |year=2025 |isbn=978-0393007701 |edition=Revised |location=New York City |publication-date=1990 |pages=155}}</ref> in contrast to the religiously enigmatic reports about the origin of [[Adam and Eve|first human couples]] on earth as an expression of divine will, but closer to the ancient trap to pacify political conflicts among the groups of Neolithic mankind. Examples include [[Prometheus]]' uprising against [[Zeus]], who created [[Pandora]] as a fatal wedding gift for [[Epimetheus]] to divide and rule this titanic brothers; [[Plato]]'s myth of spherical men cut into isolated individuals for the same reason;<ref>{{cite book |last1=Plato |title=Symposion |chapter=Aristophanes' speech}}</ref> and the similarly resolved revolt of inferior gods in the Flood epic [[Atra-Hasis]]. Nonetheless, without examination in the light of modern primate research, as demanded by Freud, these ideas remain in the status of an unproven [[hypothesis]] of [[paleoanthropology]], merely a "''just so story'' as a not unpleasant English critic wittily called it. But I mean it honours a hypothesis if it shows the capability of creating context and understanding in new areas."<ref name="Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse">{{cite book |last1=Freud |first1=Sigmund |title=Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse |publisher=textlog.de |pages=X – Die Masse und die Urhorde |url=https://www.textlog.de/freud/abhandlungen/massenpsychologie/x-die-masse-und-die-urhorde#fnref-1}}</ref>

According to Freud, this hypothesis explains the present-day son's conflict with his father over his mother, naming this view after [[Sophocles]]' tragedy ''[[Oedipus]]'', and supplementing it with case studies such as the genital ''Phobia of a five-year-old boy''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Freud |first1=Sigmund |title=Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben |date=1909}}</ref> However, the author not only discovered this complex and the 'oral fixatet' Syndrom of Narzissos' [[Narcissism#Historical background|regress]] back into amniotic fluid (as far as possible given the state of science at the time), but also devised a hypothesis of healthy emotional development, which presupposes the natural relationships of Homo sapiens from birth and takes place in three successive stages: the [[Psychosexual development|oral, anal and genital phases]]. Whereby the sexual drive of the latter takes a no less genetically determined ‘latency’ break – the ''Sleeping Beauty'' – between the ages of about 7 and 12 for the benefit of social-intellectual growth.

===Traditional setting===
Psychoanalysts place large emphasis on experiences of [[early childhood]], and try to overcome [[Childhood amnesia|infantile amnesia]]. In traditional Freudian setting,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Schafer |first=Roy |date=1994-01-01 |title=Commentary: Traditional Freudian and Kleinian Freudian analysis |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07351699409533998 |journal=Psychoanalytic Inquiry |volume=14 |issue=3 |pages=462–475 |doi=10.1080/07351699409533998 |issn=0735-1690|url-access=subscription }}</ref> the patient lies on a couch, and the analyst sits just behind or somehow out of sight. The patient should express all his thoughts, all secrets and dreams, including [[Free association (psychology)|free associations]] and [[Fantasy (psychology)|fantasies]]. In addition to its task of strengthening the ego with its ability to [[Dialectic|think dialectical]] – Freud's ''primacy of intellect'' –, therapy also aims to induce [[transference]]. The patient thus [[Psychological projection|projects]] his educated him mother and father as internalised in his superego since birth onto the analyst. As he once did as a baby and little child, he experiences again the feelings of helpless dependence, all the futile longing for love, anger, rage and urge for revenge on the failing parents, but now with the possibility of processing these contents that have shaped his persona.<ref name="FP">Chessick, Richard D. 2007. ''The Future of Psychoanalysis''. Albany: [[State University of New York|State University of New York Press]]. p. 125.</ref><ref name="RP">[[Erich Fromm|Fromm, Erich]]. 1992. ''The Revision of Psychoanalysis''. New York: Open Road. pp. 12–13. (points 1 to 6).</ref>

The term ''[[countertransference]]'' means that the analyst himself projects such content onto his patient; then he has an own open problem and has to go to his own analyst if he is not yet able to help himself due to inexperience.<ref name="HC">[[Alberto Stefana|Stefana, Alberto]]. 2017. ''History of Countertransference: From Freud to the British Object Relations School''. London: [[Routledge]]. {{ISBN|978-1138214613}}.</ref>

From the sum of what is shown and communicated, the analyst deduces unconscious conflicts with imposed traumas that are causing the patient's symptoms, his persona and character problems, and works out a [[diagnosis]]. This explanation of the origin of loss of mental health and the analytical processes as a whole confronts the patients ego with the pathological [[defence mechanism]]s, makes him aware of them as well as the instinctive contents of the id that have been repressed by them,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Vaillant |first=George E. |date=1994 |title=Ego mechanisms of defense and personality psychopathology. |url=http://doi.apa.org/getdoi.cfm?doi=10.1037/0021-843X.103.1.44 |journal=Journal of Abnormal Psychology |language=en |volume=103 |issue=1 |pages=44–50 |doi=10.1037/0021-843X.103.1.44 |pmid=8040479 |issn=0021-843X|url-access=subscription }}</ref> and thus helps him to better understand himself and the world in which he lives, was born and educated.

===Touching infinity===
[[File:Neurology Freud's three Instances.png|thumb|right|310px|The three instances of the [[Structural model of the psyche|structural model]], combinated with findings of modern neurology. The drawing refers to the basic theses of Freuds metapsychology. According to it, the ''soul'' with its innate needs, consciousness and memory resembles a ''"psychic apparatus"'' to which ''"[[Spatial cognition|spatial extension]] and composition of several parts can be attributed (...)"'' and whose ''"location ... is the brain (nervous system)"''.<ref>Sigmund Freud: ''Abriß der Psychoanalyse''. (1938), p. 6</ref> Decisive for this view of Freud was his ''[[Project for a Scientific Psychology]]''. Written in 1895, he develops there the thesis that the brain is able to store experiences in its neuronal network through ''"a permanent change after an event"'': one of the superego's main functions.]]

Not least, this includes the fact that the [[Neuropsychoanalysis|neurological branch]] of psychoanalysis recently provided evidence that the brain stores experiences in specialised neuronal networks (memory function of the superego) and that the ego performs its highest focus of conscious thinking in [[frontal lobe]].<ref name="PS">{{Cite journal |last1=Centonze |first1=Diego |last2=Siracusano |first2=Alberto |last3=Calabresi |first3=Paolo |last4=Bernardi |first4=Giorgio |date=November 2004 |title=The Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895): a Freudian anticipation of LTP-memory connection theory |journal=Brain Research Reviews |volume=46 |issue=3 |pages=310–314 |doi=10.1016/j.brainresrev.2004.07.006 |issn=0165-0173 |pmid=15571772 |s2cid=7871434}}</ref><ref name="HP" /> In some respects, Freud himself embodies the founder of this field of modern research. Parallel to the consolidation of psychoanalysis, however, he turned away from it with the argument that ''consciousness'' is directly given – cannot be explained by insights into physiological connections. Essentially, only two things were known about the living soul: The brain with its nervous system extending over the entire organism and the acts of consciousness. In Freud's view, therefore any number of phenomena can be integrated between "both endpoints of our knowledge" (findings of modern neurology just as well as the position of our planet in the universe, for example), but this only contribute to the spatial "localisation of the acts of consciousness", not to their understanding.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Freud |first1=Sigmund |title=Abriß der Psychoanalyse, Gesammelte Werke |date=1940 |pages=63−138, here S. 67}}</ref>

With reference to Descartes, contemporary neuropsychoanalysts explain this situation as [[mind-body dichotomy]], namely both as two total different kinds of 'stuff': the physical matter as the ''object'', and the mentally conscious ego as the ''subject'', which cannot objectify itself in itself (as ‘pure spirit’) but only via the ‘reflective’ diversions of its corporal matter. With regard to Freud's libido (which branches out into its ''mental'' and ''bodily'' areas in a [[complementary]] way) they call this dichotomy the "dual-aspect monism".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Radner|first=Daisie|date=1971|title=Descartes' Notion of the Union of Mind and Body|journal=Journal of the History of Philosophy|volume=9|issue=2|pages=159–170|doi=10.1353/hph.2008.1109|s2cid=144808035|issn=1538-4586}}</ref> It touches on the point of psychoanalysis that is most difficult to grasp with the means of empirically based sciences – in fact, only under Kant's assumption that living systems always make judgements about the phenomena they perceive with regard to the satisfaction of their immanent needs. Freud therefore conceptualised the libido as a [[Teleology|teleological]] element of his threefold model of the soul, as a desiring energy that links cause and ''purpose'', and not as a mere ‘[[Causality (physics)|effect]]’. The libido, as universally desiring energy like Plato's [[Eros (concept)|Eros]], embodies both the ''psychic'' drive source of all instinctual needs of living beings and the [[First Cause|first cause]] of their ''physical'' development. In this way, sexual behaviour realises Darwin's law of [[natural selection]] by ''favouring'' the [[Survival of the fittest|best-fitting]] and aesthetically well-proportioned body forms in reproduction.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Freud |first1=Sigmund |title=Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie |pages=Kap. 2, Abschnitt Beschauen und Betasten Consideration of a teleological effect behind the evolutionary processes of ‘’mutation and natural selection‘’, which Freud generally bases on the excitability of libidinal energy.)}}</ref> Freud was no less familiar with the energetic-economic aspect of evolution and psychological processes (cf. his definition of the three metapsychological coordinates)<ref>{{Cite book |last=Freud |first=Sigmund |title=Gesammelte Werke. Bd. 14 |pages=85 |chapter=Selbstdarstellung}}</ref> than with the [[Transcendentals|transcendentaly unified trinity]] of Plato's philosophy, according to which Truth expresses the Good and the Beauty in equal measure, anchored in the proportions of the [[golden ratio]].

=== Life and death drive - the operators of Libido ===
In ''[[Beyond the Pleasure Principle]]'', Freud cites Plato's myth of the ''[[spherical people]]'' as evidence that his theory of the drives strictly conservative character already had a precursor in antiquity. Plato's character Aristophanes tells how this hermaphroditic, dangerously powerful sphere was 'analytical' cut up into many isolated individuals, carried out by Zeus to punish and weaken the [[Aggression (disambiguation)|aggressor]] for its attack 'on heaven' (similar to how he created [[Pandora]] to [[Divide and conquer|devide and rule]] the Titan's cause of their revolt). As a result of this divine surgical opperation it seems as if a completely new kind of organism has been created here by abolition of the former. However, the need for lustful union makes these weak artificial humans strive to restore their strong original state (see the round of artists, philosophers and others in Plato's ''[[Symposium (Plato)|Symposion]]'').<ref>Sigmund Freud: ''Jenseits des Lustprinzips''. In: Sigmund Freud: ''Psychologie des Unbewußten'' (= ''Studienausgabe'' Band 3), Frankfurt am Main 1975, S. 213–272, hier: 266. Vgl. [[Gerasimos Santas]]: ''Plato and Freud. Two Theories of Love'', Oxford 1988, S. 160–162.</ref> Accordingly, Freuds libido as the desiring energy of this process contains two complementary opperators: The ''[[death drive]]'' or ''destrudo'', which has a decomposing effect on complex extern factors, and the ''[[life drive]]'', whose action consists of reassembling the singel products of decomposition in a way that serves the organism.<ref>{{citation|author=Sigmund Freud |date=1967 |edition=5. |pages=57 ff |periodical=Gesammelte Werke |publisher=S. Fischer |title=Jenseits des Lustprinzips |volume=13}}<!-- auto-translated from German by Module:CS1 translator --></ref>

The myth is about three different organism: gods and spherical people given as nature, and the artificial humans. Taking a look at the phenomenon of nutrition can resolve confusion about the complementary pursuit of libido: An animal was shot with ‘bow and arrow’ and its flesh must be broken down into pieces, finally up to the size of different types of molecules (destruction by the [[Gastric acid|stomach acid]]); only after this the hunter's organism is able to integrate those substances that are suitable for its regeneration, growth and reproduction. Analogously in the hunter's mind: his thinking process analyses complex phenomena in order to understand each single part from bottom up; it then synthesises the useful ones into new ideas, strategies, models that shall [[Reality principle|fit to reality]], complementing the id's [[Pleasure principle (psychology)|pleasure principle]]. The meaning of ''psycho-analysis'', therefore, lies not literally in the latter [[Terminology|term]], but in both, analysis as well as synthesis.

===''The Question of Lay Analysis''===
Freud's worldview, with dream interpretation as ''the royal way into unconscious'', wasn't conceived as a source of income (''money is not a child's desire''), but as a method whose appropriation is open to everyone. In the ''Wednesday round'' of young psychoanalysis, academics and ‘uneducated’ worked together on an equal footing to rediscover the happiness lost in the Dark Continent of the human soul – not easy to understand for some outsiders.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Freud |first1=Sigmund |title=Freud's letters to Fliess |date=16 January 1897 |pages=320 |quote=Happiness is the subsequent fulfilment of a prehistoric wish. That is why wealth makes us so unhappy; money was not a childhood wish.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Gay |first1=Peter |title=Freud. Eine Biographie für unsere Zeit |date=1995 |publisher=Fischer |location=Frankfurt am Main |page=200}}</ref> In order to counteract misunderstandings, Freud clearly sets out the only condition for being able to pursue this interest seriously in his treatise on ''[[The Question of Lay Analysis]]'': the methodical examination of one's own inner situation. Wherever possible with the assistance of an already experienced psychoanalyst.

Psychoanalytic perspectives are also used outside the therapeutic field, for example in interpretation of philosophical concepts (replacing Kant's [[A priori and a posteriori|a priori]] with the conditions of mental apparatus)<ref>{{cite book |last1=Freud |first1=Sigmund |author1-link= |title=Gesammelte Werke |publisher=Anna Freud |year=1955 |editor1-link=Band 17 |edition=5 |volume=XVII |location=London. Editorial: Imago Publishing |pages=152 |language=German}}</ref> and other products of cultural-civilisational creativity of mankind as well as its zoological closest relatives.