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depending on the situation. A psycho-analysis eliminates weakness from the
person s character. So we become less socially dependent on other people and
achieve more self-reliance: our individual identity is strengthened. And we can
adopt a more mature social role, without dependency: our social identity is
strengthened too. By eliminating the subconscious conflict the analysis enables
the person to be more honest, harmonious and realistic in their personal
relationships.
The person s total consciousness is their own production, based on their
experience of life. This includes the organisation and contents of their
subconscious mind. Therefore each person s consciousness is unique to
themself. Each person s relationship to the subconscious mind is unique too.
Each person s investigation of themself will depend on this relationship.
Therefore each analysis is unique. These ideas only say that everything is
unique: the person, the mind, the analysis (and the therapist).
A psycho-analysis does not produce followers but individuals. In the
journey through the subconscious mind there are no leaders and no
led.
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Copyright © 2002 Ian Heath
All Rights Reserved
The copyright is mine, and the article is free to use. It can be
reproduced anywhere, so long as the source is acknowledged.
Ian Heath, London UK
e-mail address:
iheath3.tsm@relative-mindmatter.co.uk
New Ideas in
The Subconscious Mind
Psychology
Home List
The Process of Psycho - Analysis
The links in the table on the left take you to sub-headings in this
article.
Unpleasant Memories
Sub-headings
Unpleasant memories from childhood affect us more
than unpleasant memories generated in adult life.
1st Rule
Unfortunately, negative memories from childhood do
More limitations
not fade away; instead they get represssed since they
are not valued.
Two ways to
change
Memories that are negatively valued can lead to personality disturbance,
because such memories become combined with anxiety. The anxiety is usually
kept under control by ensuring that the memory is kept repressed and relegated
to the subconscious mind. In order to remove the causes of personality
disturbance these unpleasant, subconscious memories have to be brought into
full consciousness: this process ensures that the accompanying anxiety is
released and dissipated. This procedure is not a pleasant process, and gives rise
to a rule, which can be called the first rule of dynamic psycho-therapy.
The first rule of dynamic psycho-therapy
In order to make a small, real change in a person s character, that
person as to wade through a great amount of psychological rubbish.
When a person injures a muscle, the pain that is experienced is out of all
proportion to the extent of actual injury: a small injury causes a great deal of
pain. So too, the extensiveness of psychological pain is created by a small
trauma (small in proportion to the sorrow). This is especially true in early
childhood, if trauma occurs when the fledgling ego has not yet achieved
stability. Psychological pain distorts all relationships. To resolve such pain, the
person has to work their way through the great extent of the sorrow that it has
caused them. Much work on relationships has to be done before a small
significant change is achieved.
For example, if the child has experienced rejection by significant people, it may
tend to use rejection to sway it towards preferrring aloneness. Then as an adult
it will usually resort to rejecting other people when relationships get difficult. To
overcome the problem of rejection involves persevering in relationships that
have become very oppressive; the person has to persevere till the intensity of the
problem eventually begins to diminish. Then the problem has become
manageable rather than oppressive. Working through sorrow means working
through memories and anxieties, and this involves the process of abreaction.
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More Limitations to Psycho-analysis
Memories may take three different forms. They may be visual ones. They may
depend on sound and language, and so be verbal memories. They may be a
cluster of emotions that seem to have become displaced or separated from an
unpleasant experience in the past (in this case the person does not get upset if
he remembers the experience).
In all these three forms, memories in the subconscious mind link together by
association of similar themes or ideas, and not by any rational bond. Therefore
in order to reach into the subconscious mind so as to retrieve forgotten
memories we cannot use reason. Instead what is required is insight. Ideas in the
subconscious mind link together by association. Hence in order to explore any
problem, the person has to follow a chain of associations back to the cause of
that problem. So free association to ideas is the major method in psycho-
analysis.
Since the memory that we wish to retrieve is subconscious, how can we locate
it? A memory becomes associated with a negative valuation when we attach
anxiety to it; most unpleasant memories indicate previous experiences that
caused anxiety to us. In a psycho-analysis what happens is that we try to analyse
the existing state of anxiety of the client. The anxiety indicates the presence of a
subconscious unpleasant memory. The greater the intensity of anxiety the easier
it becomes to locate the memory. Why is this? When a subconscious unpleasant
memory  rises closer to the boundary of consciousness the person experiences
an increase in the intensity of anxiety. This process facilitates insight: in effect,
the more serious the problem that a person has, the easier it can be to penetrate
to the cause  the intensity of the anxiety makes it easier for the association of
ideas to be followed.
However, there are three major difficulties here that are likely to
frustrate analysis.
The person may not have developed a sufficient degree of
awareness.
The intensity of anxiety may be more than the client can handle
or is willing to face.
The cause may not be believed by the therapist.
The cause may not be understandable within the therapist s theoretical
views  for example, any explanations that involve the theory of
reincarnation.
In a psycho-analysis the client has to use both insight and reason. To prefer one
at the expense of the other will cause problems. The strength of rational
thinking is in the ability to examine and remove self-deception, rationalisations,
and other defensive mental manoeuvres. But first the faulty thinking has to be
brought out into the open, using insight.
A problem cannot be solved by intelligent guesswork (by the therapist). Even if
correct, the guess will not release anxiety in the client and the problem will
remain. Only insight by the client releases anxiety. Hence the client
needs to explore the emotional dynamics underlying his / her attitudes and to
delay a rational investigation of those attitudes themselves till later.
The difficulty with an analysis for a stable adult, who wishes to change but is not [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]