Describe the general principles of psychoanalysis. Include information about its theoretical background, how it seeks to help people, its key concepts, and its current form.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Freud developed psychoanalysis to help people experiencing hallucinations and excessive or uncontrollable emotions. Freud believed that hidden conflicts and unfulfilled wishes from childhood caused these emotional problems and that his patients needed to bring their unconscious desires, conflicts, and repressed feelings and memories into awareness. The role of the psychoanalyst is to help the client access their unconscious through free association, dream interpretation, and transference.
Free association is a process whereby the client is asked to say anything that comes to mind, no matter how trivial, strange, or shocking. Free association can also be an open-ended "stream of consciousness" conversation between client and therapist, or the therapist reads a word and the client says the first thing that pops into his or her mind. Freud believed these forms of free association would end by revealing unconscious conflicts, because the person doesn't have time to censor his or her response.
Dream interpretation is performed by the therapist, who tries to find the important meaning of a person's dream. Freud believed that dreams provided a "window" into the unconscious and were symbolic of a person's unconscious conflicts and desires. He believed that the help of a trained psychoanalyst was usually necessary for clients to understand their dreams, and that a knowledge of the client's history was required to understand the symbolic meaning of that person's dream.
Freud used the term transference to describe clients transferring feelings and desires from childhood relationships with significant adults onto the therapist. All of the feelings, conflicts, and problems associated with those earlier relationships are transferred to the therapist. By replaying key relationships from their past, the client works through previously unresolved conflicts, at which point transference fades.
Freud's techniques have been criticized due to the lack of empirical evidence to support his theories. Also, psychoanalysis is a time-consuming process, which may result in clients spending more time in psychoanalysis than they would in other therapies. Freud's work formed the foundation for other early psychoanalysts and many contemporary talk therapy formats.
A more current form of psychoanalysis is called brief psychodynamic therapy (BPT). This type of therapy lasts between 10 and 25 sessions, and most clients experience improvement within the first three months. BPT therapists are more active in the process and spend less time exploring childhood experiences. They focus on current problems and relationships, identify one major focus and goal for the therapy, and restrict their interpretive work to the central issue, which shortens the amount of time needed for treatment.