What Is Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud

What Is Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is the common way to treat the anxiety and depression disorders introduced by Sigmund Freud the founder of modern psychology. To talk about psychoanalysis we should first take a look on the founder of psychology, "Sigmund Freud".

Founder of Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 in the Moravia (Czech Republic) in a middle class family. He was an Austrian physician, neurologist and psychologist. He founded the theory of psychoanalysis. Freud interest in neurological research begins when he was studying at the Vienna University.

He worked in nervous diseases, dermatology and psychiatry for three years at the General Hospital Vienna. He became the Professor of neuropathology in 1885 at Vienna University. Then he became the student of Jean Charcot. Jean Charcot was treating his patients with hypnotic suggestions.

Freud’s interest in psychopathology highly increased because of the study of hysteria under the teaching of Charcot. When he started his private practice in Vienna specialization his interest was somehow shifted to the psychological understanding of psychopathology.

In 1895 he wrote a book on hysteria in which he describes that the symptoms of hysteria are the result of the uncharged emotional energy associated with forgotten psychic traumas, the name of the book is “Studies on Hysteria”. At that stage in his method of treatment he puts the patient in a hypnotic state and then he can recall the traumatic experience, this was called Catharsis. That moment was the beginning of the psychoanalysis.

Foundations of Psychoanalysis

Psychic determinism is the main idea in psychoanalysis; the behavior of an organism is determined and has a cause that lies in his mind. Also the unconscious forces have a massive affect on the significant amount of behavior.
In psychoanalysis the terms like normal and abnormal are same in kind but if you compare them in the sense of degree then they are different. The main source of data in the psychoanalysis is the case study and the clinical analysis.

Structure of consciousness

In this theory mind has a structure that consists of the following parts of consciousness.

Conscious 
Subconscious
Preconscious
Unconscious

Dreams in Freudian Approach

Dreams also have a big importance in the psychoanalysis structure. Dreams are the reflection of our unconscious needs and desires that we see when we are sleeping. There are two levels of dreams described by Sigmund Freud. Manifest content, which is the part of the dream that we see and observe while having the dream and Latent content which hides the true meaning of the dream which is distorted and unclear.

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