Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis, otherwise known as psychodynamics, is the original form of psychotherapy founded by Sigmund Freud at the turn of the last century. Freud's most notable discovery was that of the unconscious mind - a part of us that we do not directly know or control and therefore, in a way, a part of our self that is not our self. Psychoanalysts such as Alfred Adler, Carl Jung and Freud's own daughter Anna Freud have since developed the theory towards the psychodynamic psychotherapy that is widely used today.
Inevitably I have been influenced by Freud and psychoanalysis;here are the main concepts and methods that I have taken from this theory:
The Unconscious
CBT, existentialism and psychoanalysis all acknowledge the presence of thoughts and feelings of which we are unaware. However counter-intuitive the concept of a thought that we did not think may be, it is evident that talking therapy can expose these processes; this frequently leads to clients being able to find new and more beneficial ways to cope with their lives.
Transference and Distortion
Freud recognised how his clients would sometimes treat him as they would their mother, father or sibling. Harry Stack Sullivan developed this idea into distortion; the idea that we learn a set of template relationships in our childhood and a matching array of methods with which we deal with them. When we encounter situations or people in the world that remind us of these early relationships, we fall back on our old coping strategies.
Free Association
Freud believed that the unconscious was at work when our minds wandered, seemingly of their own accord, from one thought to the next. From this he developed free association, a process where the client is given the space to speak about whatever should come to mind, however seemingly unrelated. It is within these associations that the hidden workings of the unconscious can be discovered and then worked with.