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The Practice of Psychoanalysis: Freud’s Legacy · Gabriel Ellis, PhD | The Curious Mind Podcast

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Welcome to another episode of the Curious 9 podcast.
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My name is Gabriel Ellis, I'm a psychologist and a
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psychotherapist and in the last episode I started to summarise
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the mature work of Sigmund Freud, who famously is the
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forefather of psychoanalysis and to some respect also was the
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avant-garde in modernizing psychotherapy more than 120
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years ago. I wanted to start with some
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questions that came up from the past, from the last video and to
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deepen also the topic that I went into last time, which is
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mostly the IT, the so-called super ego, which I will talk
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about a little bit. Why this description is not so
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good? This translation and the eye or
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the so-called ego? So the first question that came
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up was why was this part of the mind that is unconscious and is
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the storehouse of the old inherited drives?
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Why did Floyd call it the IT and he already the comment on the
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translation. Already in the lifetime of
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Sigmund Floyd, he had psychoanalytic students who
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dedicated themselves to translators work into English.
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Streaky was the translator who did that.
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And already in his lifetime, Floyd approved of the wording of
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Streaky which was to use for the German is which is literally
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translated just the personal pronoun.
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It for it to use the latinized ID for I to use the latinized
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ego for the Uber ish to use the Latin translation, the Super
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ego. Now those translations have been
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criticized already enough. I am one of those.
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I think that with those rather technically sounding terms, it
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goes away from what Floyd used in the original German, which is
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basically to give them very mundane labels that easily
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relate to our own life. And when we give them letter
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words, then it sounds like a technical thing and you know, a
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concept that is far away. So I, at least I stick to a
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literal translation to help you to integrate it into your
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understanding. So for is it for I, for the ich
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I in English and for Uber ich in English?
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I use the awkward term above I and it's not a good term, but it
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will be clear to you why I use that.
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So the question is why did Floyd use this word it, which is so
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general and vague? And this goes back to Floyd's
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work, the I and the IT or the Ego and the IT.
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If you look up the translation from 1923, and in there he
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already refers to another practitioner, medical
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practitioner who also was interested in psychoanalysis,
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which was Giorg Krodek. In the same year he published a
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book which is called The Book of the IT and Toyd got a preprint
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of this book. So and the book of his, which is
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the I in the IT or the Ego in the IT, he refers to this work
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of Krodek and a quote that Floyd brings.
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And I think my quote here is a little bit longer than what is
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in Floyd's work. This is a quote from Codec that
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explains this wording. I am of the opinion that man is
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lived by the unknown is lived by the unknown.
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There is an IT in him, something wonderful that regulates
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everything he does and everything that happens to him.
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The sentence I live is only partially correct.
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It expresses a small partial phenomenon of the basic truth.
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Man is lived by it. End Quote.
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Now this idea of the IT as the unknown inside of us that
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actually lives us and we as individuals, as conscious I, we
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only believe that we are living. Actually we are lived this idea.
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Freud believed that Gotek took over by from Nietzsche who lived
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only a few decades before before them.
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But this is in fact not true. This has been researched.
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Gotek actually refers to something like natural Mystics
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of the 18th and 19th century. So Kodak believed that nature is
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kind of the the great vessel for what is then become the mind,
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and nature lives through the mind, through the humans.
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And there's only this one speck of an eye that believes that it
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is the agent, where in fact nature is the agent.
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And for this natural force, for this source of nature, he just
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termed it with this general it because nature is so vast and is
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everywhere around us. Freud, like this term, took it
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over from Godek, but he did not use it in the same sense.
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He apparently was just fascinated by the idea to give a
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name to those forces that came through nature, but more in the
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way of our inherited genetically formed drives that we are born
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with. The term of the Uber ish Latin
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English translation super ego, which sounds like Superman or
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something. It sounds weird, so I keep the
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very literal, the two literal translation.
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The above I this is a term that Floyd started to use in the same
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publication from 1923, which just to remind you is about 40
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years after he started to work professionally and to publish.
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So quite a while after. Now before that already Floyd
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used the word the self ideal or the ideal self.
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And then he in 1923 started to replace it with the uba ish with
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the above eye. And he used this word because as
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I will show in a little bit now when I go into it in detail.
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But to tell it already now, he used this term because in a way
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he believed that this layer of the mind inside of us that
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regulates our do's and don'ts and mustn't is the higher the
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the higher principle in humanity that when we refer to morals, to
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ethics, to what what makes humans honorable and kind of
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standing above just mammals. He believed that this is to a
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large part due to this part of what develops from the eye, and
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so he called it the above eye, the Uber ish which is above the
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eye. So This is why I use this
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awkward term, because it just signifies what he had in mind,
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where in fact super ego might be literally correct.
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But we are not so much using any more the Latin in its literal
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sense, and so it changes into something else when we use the
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English word super ego or sometimes I see in publications
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over I. But it doesn't again signify how
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Floyd believe that this is the source of the good, the morally
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good, the social good, the community good.
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So This is why I will stick to above.
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I henceforth to go a little bit more into that to recap, but
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also to expand on what I mentioned in the last episode.
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In the beginning for Floyd, all the libido, all the libidinous
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energy, the life energy, or you make it to make it a little bit
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more understandable. The fascination is in the IT.
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Whenever you're fascinated by something, this is libidinous
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energy. So in the beginning for Floyd,
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the source of it is the IT. Then the IT starts to project,
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which means to throw out to project parts of the libido onto
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objects. And above all these are at the
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beginning close people if you think about babies and toddlers.
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But then the IT projects this libidinous energy also onto
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objects, like toys, onto music for example.
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Then later money, work, ideas and other things.
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The ego then identify the ego, so the IT throws the libidinous
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energy out, IT projects it and finds fascination in the mother,
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the breast of the mother, the music, the toys, the IT finds
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fascination there. Now the ego, according to Floyd,
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starts to identify itself with these objects or these people
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starts to identify itself with its mother, with its father,
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with the toys. And so it interjects the object
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libido. So the IT throws out the libido
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and then the ego brings it back again into itself.
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A very simple example is music. If there is a tune that you
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like, a tune that you're fascinated with, then you like
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to listen to it over and over again.
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On this stage, the libidinous energy is on the object of the
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music, what comes out of the loud speakers.
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Now, what the ego does is it identifies itself with it.
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It interjects it and brings it into itself.
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And this is when we hear the melody as an earworm inside of
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our head, when we remind ourselves of the melody, when we
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whistle it, when we hum it, when the desire comes up to hear it
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again. This is the internal part, which
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is just a sign or it's an example of how we internalise
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this fascination and we are able to repeat it in our minds and we
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are not dependent on the external object anymore.
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So this is how the ego, the eye identifies itself with these
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people and these objects that introjects, brings it back, the
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libido into itself. And in this way these new paths
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of what has now become effectively the above eye.
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The eye is acknowledges, the fascination, brings it back.
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And as it is going back into the mind, this is forming the above
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eye, the what is otherwise called the Super ego.
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And so the fascination, the love is now inside of me.
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The love for the object is a love for an internalized object.
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This is the above eye. The first interjects in
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particular that are brought in, which is the fascination with
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the mother. The fascination with the father
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are close to the IT because the IT has this love affair with
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those internalized objects and is opposed to the eye.
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And why it is opposed to the eye will become clear now.
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Here's a quote from Freud. The Uber ish is a monument to
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the former weakness and dependence of the eye and
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continues its rule over the mature eye.
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So to read it again, the Uber ish is a monument to the former
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weakness and dependence of the eye of the small child, the
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toddler, which is so dependent on its parents.
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And the Uber ish continues its rule over the mature eye, which
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means even when we grow up, when we get older, we might be
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further away from the dominance of our factual parents.
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But we have not escaped the dominance of the Uber age of the
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above eye inside ourselves. To continue the quote, just as
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the child was forced to obey its parents, the eye submits to the
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categorical imperative of its uberich.
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Again, just as the child was forced to obey its parents, the
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eye submits to the uberich. And this is the opposition of
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the uberich of the above eye towards the eye.
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Because what we internalize from those very first so-called
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objects, which are our mother and our father, are, according
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to Floyd rules, the do's, the don'ts, the have to's, the
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mustn't's. And because those rules are in
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opposition to the its demands of immediate Dr. satisfaction.
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Because of that, the Uber ish is opposed to the eye.
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The eye wants to fulfil those demands and it is prohibited.
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It is limited, it is hindered by the Uber ish in the immediate
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satisfaction of its drives. And so the the eye goes into
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opposition to the Uber to the above eye.
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The parents commands and prohibitions, as I said, now
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appear as conscious. So as soon as I internalize
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those rules, I'm not in opposition against the parents
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anymore. I might be in opposition to the
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internal internalized rules, but if I if I agree with them, then
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they appear as conscience. I've done something wrong, and
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then I feel bad. The feeling of guilt, the
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feeling of bad conscience. And this in turn, also opens up,
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according to Floyd, the connection to the social world.
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When I have an internal compass, the moral compass, the compass
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that in fact consists of internalized rules from the
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parents, then these, this is an instance of social connection
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that applies to the social realm in total.
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It was before regulating only my immediate surrounding with my
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parents. I internalized it and now I'm
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walking around with this ethical compass inside of me, and this
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helps me to regulate the closeness, the connections with
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other people, with strangers on the street, with public spaces,
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at work and in relationships. So this opens me up to become a
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social being. And this is exactly why Floyd
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believed that the Uber age, that the above eye has such a crucial
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role in making humans better, better than the natural brutal
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drives that animals are confronted with.
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This is what distinguishes humans.
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Now, as I just said, the IT projects libitulus energy and
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then the eye identifies with it and brings it back into itself.
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But if there are too many introjects that are incompatible
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with each other, only think of, to simplify it, the parents
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representing different different parenting roles.
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Let's say the the mother is more strict, the father is more
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forgiving and allowing. So then I have two sets of rules
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internalized from the father. I have the internalized rule of
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let me do it, let me try things, let me experiment, let me fail.
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And from the mother I have the sense of don't do it, don't take
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any risks, stay at home and so on.
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So whenever an urge come comes to explore, then I'm split
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inside of, from in between the two parts of the part that wants
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to encourage me, that wants me to try and do it, and the part
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that inhibits me. I have interjected 2
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incompatible parts and when this happens the eye splits into
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fragments because the individual identifications clothes
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themselves off through resistance to one another.
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Just imagine, you know, a household situation where my
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parents indeed are having an argument about parenting styles
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and they don't come to an agreement.
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So my father defends his position, my mother defends her
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position. They clash and they don't agree
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with each other. They find no compromise.
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I internalize this, and this is very Simply put, but just
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imagine, this is what Freud means, that the struggle
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continues on inside of me. Those individual parts are
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closed off, they don't agree with each other and this is what
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keeps up the fragmentation of the eye, the fragmentation of
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the voices inside of me. Now with the help of the above
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eye, the eye develops from Dr. obedience to the IT to drive
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inhibition. So the over eye, the Uber
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effectively limits the IT. And so the eye comes in control
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of parts of the IT. And this is fundamental for
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FOID. For the late FOID, he aims at
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the eye gaining paths, gaining regions from the IT and bringing
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it under the control of the eye. Because this for him, if it is a
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an organized eye, if it is an eye that is integrated within
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itself, then it is very much able to to do its job, which is
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to navigate between it above eye and reality.
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This is possible when the eye has conquered a lot of ground
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from the IT. If it is not, then we get into
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issues and this is what I will describe pretty soon in the
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practical application of the psychoanalysis at the time of
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the late Floyd. So the eye in this position can
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be compared to and use the metaphor of the rider who with
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borrowed strength. Has to rein in the superior
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strength of the horse. The rider obviously is not as
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strong as the horse, but he aims to control the horse, to channel
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its energies into the direction where they want to go.
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And this is for Floyd. The eye, the borrowed strength
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first comes from the above eye, and then it comes from
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psychoanalysis. And together, so to speak, the
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eye and the above eye and the eye with the psychoanalysis,
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they can battle those grounds with the IT bring them onto the
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control of the ego. So psych analysis is an expanded
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tool that is intended to enable the eye to progressively conquer
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the IT. And here's a it became almost a
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psychological statement saying an expression of Floyd where it
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was I shall become I don't want to be governed, I want to govern
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and this territory I claim from the IT and by the way, this
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quote is coming from the so-called new series of lectures
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on an introduction to psychoanalysis, which was
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published in 1933. Now, if the eye does not
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overcome the challenges, and here especially the psychosexual
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developments that Floyd is so keen on describing, but I don't
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go into it. So if the eye does not overcome
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its challenges in the in its development, then the
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organization of the eye is weakened in adulthood.
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It has not integrated the difficult experiences.
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It had the child, the maturing child, the adolescent, and then
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the adult. And so the eye is weak in its
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structure because there are so many important things that are
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outside of the eye that are still in conflict, that are
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still in the IT. And so it has not overcome those
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challenges and its organization is weak.
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Partly this is also due to the libido parts that remain fixated
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on very early objects, let's say the mother's breast or certain
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toys or certain aspects of its body that it has not integrated.
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And so there are still the libidinos, the libidos kind of
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trapped in this objects and it didn't go back where it belongs
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to mainly into the eye, into the over eye.
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So if there are problems in adulthood, if the adult faces
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difficult situations, then sometimes the libido returns to
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these early fixations. And here you can imagine when
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adults face major difficulties, slip into what we then call a
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depression, and then develop a behavioural style that fits more
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a child. They lie in bed, they are
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passive, to give a dramatic example.
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They will suck at their thumb, which is obviously baby
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behaviour. Some adults do that and this is
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called regression, so that when we develop problems, we go back
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to early fixations, physical postures that gave us comfort,
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activities that give us comfort, objects that give us comfort and
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we So this is how we regress into an earlier time of our life
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and we display these behaviours, this regression that I mentioned
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now, which is to become passive, to suck your thumb and so on.
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This would be a regression to the earliest phase of life, in
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the phases that Floyd identified, a phase of
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demonstrative obvious helplessness.
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And the craving is for someone to come and to save me.
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We can also regress into the second phase of life, which
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Floyd associates with control and aggressiveness.
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This is when children show resistance, they rebel, they
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have tantrums and so on. We can regress also to this and
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in the adults this and mature people, this shows as
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undifferentiated aggression, as stubbornness, as controlling
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behaviour, as jealous behaviour. So this is a regression also
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into early childhood, but to the second stage of life.
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Now let's come to the practice of psychoanalysis.
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For Freud, the tools of psychoanalysis are mainly
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dreams, the discussion and interpretation of dreams, a
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phenomenon that is called transference.
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Third, the comments from the analysts and the psychoanalytic
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sessions and the so-called free associations.
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The free associations is, according to Floyd, when
25:12
clients, when patients express their thoughts freely and
25:16
without any censorship, whether it makes sense to them or not.
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So the analyst encourages the patient to just develop a stream
25:24
of consciousness and to verbalize that this is a
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technique that he used pretty early on.
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This he starts describing that in the studies on hysteria from
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1895, which is pretty much as the beginning of his
25:38
psychoanalytic concepts and work.
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There is another method that he uses in psychoanalysis, which is
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errors that we make, slips of tongue, proverbial foidien,
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slips when we forget important information, when we lose
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objects, when we have oversights that should not happen.
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This he analyzes and he started doing that also pretty early on.
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And he the publication where you find most of these examples in
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the theory behind that is in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
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published in 19 O1 pretty early on.
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Again, let me describe now in my bit more detail the two main
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methods that he also emphasizes in his mature work in the last
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decades of his life. The analysis of dreams is
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something that he started with in 1900 with his major
26:45
publication, and he continued to do so.
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The question is for Floyd, why do we dream at all?
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For Floyd, the dream. In the dream, the IT presses on
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consciousness with its various demands, and it does so in daily
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life, of course, but it does so also during sleep.
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And those pressures on the eye, those pressures on consciousness
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disturb the sleep, but the eye which it wants to ensure the
27:19
sleep, it is the protector of sleep because probably the
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biological function we have to sleep.
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So the eye for survival wants to keep up and maintain the deep
27:29
sleep. The eye, in order to meet or to
27:35
address those Dr. pressures from the IT, it tricks it and it
27:41
tricks it with the dream and with the in the dream it fakes
27:46
the immediate fulfilment of the wishes.
27:49
Again as a reminder the IT wants an immediate satisfaction.
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It does so also in sleep. The eye doesn't want to let the
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body wake up to interrupt the recharging during the sleep.
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And so it creates a scenario, it creates a fantasy in which wish
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fulfilment happens. And this is the dream.
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So essentially for Floyd Green is always wish fulfilment in a
28:16
more or less hidden way. To give you a very simple
28:20
example, let's say we go to bed hungry.
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And so the IT continues to push with the with the demands to
28:33
satisfy this hunger, but for some reason we cannot.
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And so the eye creates a dream where we eat to our hearts
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content the most delicious things.
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So this is faking an immediate Dr. satisfaction and need
28:50
satisfaction. So for it what we perceive in
28:55
the dream, the content of the dream is the so-called manifest
29:00
dream process. So this is what is clearly
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visible. This is what we usually remember
29:06
when we wake up. If we remember our dreams, this
29:09
is the manifest dream. But behind that lies the real
29:13
dream process, which what calls the latent dream thought.
29:19
And this is the important thing, this is what is actually the
29:24
demands and the conflicts of the IT.
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This latent dream thought becomes a manifest dream.
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So through something that what calls the dream work, in which
29:35
the unpleasant dream wishes, if they are unpleasant, are
29:39
concealed with the dream work, the eye plus defends itself
29:45
against certain contents of the unconscious it.
29:49
So again, the the IT presses forward with its demands.
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And some of the demands can be pretty uncomfortable for us, for
30:00
the eye. And if it's too uncomfortable,
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we would wake up from the anxiety, from the terror, from
30:08
the discomfort. And the eye wants to prevent
30:11
that. And so it conceals the message
30:15
of the IT, the the push, the drive of the IT.
30:21
However, in order to do that, the fulfilment of the of the
30:27
wishes means fantasies, the fantasies of the manifest dream.
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The concealment happens with using 2 tools.
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The eye uses the tool of condensation and the tool of
30:46
displacement. These are technical terms that
30:49
Floyd introduced. There are a few more tools, but
30:51
this these are the important ones.
30:54
Condensation means when one element of the manifest dream
30:58
contains several latent dream thoughts.
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For example, in my dream I meet a friend who has my father's
31:06
voice. Both have been critical to me,
31:13
my father. To remind myself of my father's
31:17
criticism would be too uncomfortable in the dream.
31:21
At the same time, my friend, also maybe we're business
31:24
partners, also has started to criticize me on certain
31:27
occasions. These two create conflicts in me
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and they are put together in this image of my friend
31:36
criticizing me, and only in hindsight I remember that in
31:40
this dream it criticized me in the way that my dad used to do.
31:45
So two ideas in this example are put together, they are
31:48
condensed, and in this example the eye has managed to take away
31:56
aspects of the discomfort by switching the most uncomfortable
32:02
latent ideas to my friends. And my friend's criticism is
32:07
something that bothers me, but is much more manageable than my
32:11
father's criticism. This is condensation, where one
32:14
thing in the dream contains several ideas that we have to
32:19
deconstruct. We have.
32:20
We have to unbox these in our dream analysis.
32:25
The second principle of concealment is displacement.
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Displacement means that the intensity or relevance of one
32:33
element shifts to another. For example, if I have a sexual
32:36
desire for a friend's wife in the dream.
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So this would be the latent thought, the latent dream
32:43
thought, but it is very uncomfortable because I both
32:47
respect my friend and his wife in the dream.
32:51
I dream of a woman that I have a sexual desire too.
32:55
She's a completely unknown stranger, but she has the same
32:58
name of my friend's life. So this is the displacement,
33:04
there's intensity. The latent, the actual intensity
33:09
is on my, the desire on my friend's life.
33:12
In the dream, it has switched to a completely different person,
33:15
and the link between the two is just that.
33:18
This stranger in my dream has the same name.
33:23
So in other words in other words, dreams are always the
33:26
result of a conflict. On the one hand, we have the
33:30
wish fulfilment of the IT, but it can be frightening for the
33:36
eye, and so the eye tries to limit the the conflict was the
33:44
difficulty, uncomfortable aspects of the content, the
33:49
latent content of the dream. And we wake up only if the wish
33:53
is not fulfilled. In the dream, we have not
33:56
managed to trick the IT. It continues to presses forth
34:00
with its demands. And this is, according to Floyd,
34:02
when we wake up because the content has become too
34:06
unpleasant. Obviously, in dreams the logic
34:10
is unimportant. It's unimportant to the IT.
34:14
It is primarily concerned with discharging its excitement to
34:19
press forth with its drives and its demands and its needs.
34:24
So the IT is not a logically structured entity, at least not
34:29
the everyday logic that we think in that we think with the
34:36
meaning of the dream. By the way, the latent content,
34:40
and this fault is very clear on cannot be reconstructed using
34:46
some dream lexicon or some standardized interpretations, as
34:51
sometimes caricatures of psychoanalysis have said.
34:55
Foyd himself says that the reconstruction can only happen
34:59
with the dreamers association. And if you go back to my past,
35:06
to my last episode, I described this a little bit more in
35:09
detail. The Foyd consciousness is
35:13
fundamentally fragmented. We don't know everything that is
35:17
inside of us. So there are gaps.
35:20
And healing for Floyd is to a large part to close these gaps
35:26
in our understanding. A more contemporary term for it
35:30
today is to make the self more integrated, to integrate our
35:35
experience, to integrate our past into ourselves, into the
35:39
eye, into this consciousness. This is something that Floyd
35:44
already had as an image for healing.
35:47
And so it makes sense that this integration, filling those gaps,
35:51
cannot be done just by somebody telling me the interpretation of
35:55
the dream or me looking it up on the Internet.
35:58
What does it mean when my teeth fall out?
36:00
What does it mean when I see a big wave or so in the dream?
36:04
This cannot close those gaps because it comes from the
36:07
outside. The gaps have closing.
36:10
The gaps have to be fundamentally connected to me
36:14
and to my experience, to my understanding.
36:17
So This is why interpretation of dreams and in general healing is
36:21
a highly personalized, highly individual process.
36:28
OK, Now in dreams it becomes apparent that when the eye
36:32
breaks off the relationship with the outside world, which is when
36:36
we sleep and when it withdraws from the sensory organs.
36:40
So we don't perceive anymore through the eyes.
36:43
We don't hear sounds anymore from the outside.
36:45
So the eye withdraws from the sensory organs.
36:49
Then the eye dives into the IT. And here he sees a link to
36:57
neurosis. Because what is now crucial for
37:00
Floyd is that the same mechanism of dream formation also helps us
37:05
to understand neuroses. Now neuroses is a bit antiquated
37:11
word. What do they mean?
37:13
Up until the mid century of the 20th century, the 50s, forties,
37:19
50s that we're using this word neuroses today we would call it
37:23
different terms, For example, melancholy or depression,
37:27
anxiety, OCD or psychosomatic diseases.
37:32
So this is when we hear Floyd Speaking of neurosis.
37:36
This is what we have to keep in mind.
37:37
So essentially for Floyd, what happens in dreams is very much a
37:42
similar thing as what happens in those mental diseases and those
37:46
neurosis. And This is why he emphasized
37:50
dream understanding the logic of dreams in order to use it to
37:54
apply it to the clinical work in psychotherapy and psycho
37:58
analysis. So in those neuroses, Floyd also
38:03
sees that the ego is weakened, not because we are sleeping or
38:08
something, but because the IT is strong, too strong or the over
38:16
eye, the UBA is too strong. Both can weaken us.
38:20
The IT with its pushes the over the above eye with the
38:25
restraints. What then happens is that the
38:29
organization of the eye is loosened.
38:31
We start to misunderstand what we are doing.
38:35
We are afraid to lose our minds. We are afraid to keep it
38:40
together, that we cannot keep it together anymore.
38:43
So these are all expressions for what Freud calls that the eye is
38:49
loosening or losing its organization when that happens
38:54
because the eye is the interface with the outside world.
38:58
When the eye is weakened, then also to the relationship to
39:01
reality is weakened and then as a consequence the eye resigns to
39:07
the influence of the inner world.
39:09
Meaning the conflicts between the IT and the ubah is the Umaba
39:14
eye before the neurotic symptoms.
39:19
And this is again very specifically connected to his
39:23
psychosexual development in the childhood before the neurotic
39:26
symptoms are mainly either substitute satisfactions for
39:30
sexual needs. So I've learned as a child,
39:36
rather than to satisfy my sexual needs, to use substitutes
39:40
because the punishment was severe or the supposed
39:46
punishment was too severe. So I learned to divert the
39:49
energy. So the neurotic symptoms are
39:53
either those substitute satisfactions or their measures
39:57
to prevent sexual needs. The urge comes up essentially of
40:03
sexual nature for void. The urge comes up, but then I
40:06
want to suppress it. I want to push it down.
40:09
So I distract myself or I do things to prevent.
40:15
They're coming up, for example, compulsive behaviour, washing
40:19
hands or, you know, maybe repeating a nursery rhyme.
40:24
In my mind, everything. But just to experience what
40:26
comes from within the Floyd neurosis are not fundamentally
40:31
different from the normal state. He, we can kind of understand it
40:37
in the way that for Floyd to be a little bit neurotic is normal.
40:42
Instead neurosis and normal states of mind, they merge into
40:46
one another because they have to essentially deal with the same
40:50
conflicts. Because also the normal, also
40:52
the healthy mind is constantly trying to balance the conflicts
40:57
of within with the outside world.
40:58
It just does it successfully. Whereas in neurosis it is
41:02
starting to fail because of too much pressure, too much of
41:07
difficult situations and so on. FAUD is convinced that neurosis
41:12
are only acquired in the first sixth year of life, the basis
41:16
for the neurosis, and that the only what appears later than
41:20
adult in adulthood are only the symptoms of what happened in
41:24
those first six years. This is why he was so adamant in
41:28
going back, reconstructing the memory, understanding today's
41:32
conflicts as a representation of childhood, childhood libidinous
41:37
and sexual problems. This is, I don't agree with
41:40
this, but this is how he perceived it back then.
41:45
As children, they develop repression mechanisms that work
41:50
at the time, but they restrict, they impair the development
41:55
later on and say as adults, those maladaptations, this lack
42:02
of development, this manifests in adequate behaviour towards
42:07
other people, towards work. For example, OK, so far for the
42:13
dreams and how void related what happens in dreams to what
42:18
happens in neurosis. Let me come to a tool that he
42:22
also uses explicitly in psychoanalysis, which is
42:25
transparency in clinical practice.
42:29
Freud observed that patients express feelings and wishes that
42:34
relate to the past and to the parents, but they transferred
42:39
them to the therapist. What it what he means with that
42:43
is so Floyd let's his patients associate.
42:47
He lets them talk about the past.
42:49
It becomes clear that they had a difficult relationship, let's
42:53
say with a overly punishing father.
42:58
The analyst makes some comments and then suddenly the patients
43:02
start to behave as if the father is speaking.
43:05
They take a comment from the analyst as a stern punishment,
43:11
as an unjustified criticism, and then they react towards the
43:16
analyst kind of as if they were dealing with their father.
43:22
And this replacement of the actual, the person of the
43:28
analyst with an imminent person from the past, for example, the
43:32
father or the mother. This is what Floyd calls
43:35
transference. So transference is a special
43:38
kind of projection. The patient is projecting onto
43:44
the canvas of the analyst and C starts to see in them the father
43:50
or the mother. Now this is obviously a
43:56
cognitive bias, so to speak, but for Floyd, it has positive
44:01
aspects. It's not only problematic in a
44:04
positive way. Transference can lead to 1st,
44:09
the patient no longer wanting to get well just for themselves.
44:15
Instead, the intention to get well is for the sake of the
44:19
analyst, in order to please them just as they would please their
44:25
parent. Why is that an important part of
44:27
psychoanalysis? Because many people who come
44:30
conflicted into therapy also normal therapy or into
44:35
psychoanalysis, their wish to become well is conflicted as
44:39
well. This is a topic of its own.
44:42
I might get into it in later episode.
44:46
But just to give you an example, let's say a person gets too
44:51
little positive affection or attention in their lives.
44:55
Such a person might develop symptoms of helplessness, of
45:01
displayed discomfort, displayed sadness.
45:05
Why? Because when they do so, when
45:07
they call a friend, they say and they ask them how are you so
45:10
actually not so good. And then they get the attention.
45:14
Oh, what is it? Tell me about it.
45:16
I'm so sorry that you feel this way.
45:18
So effectively, unconsciously, they use the symptoms in order
45:23
to get attention. And This is why they would be
45:26
conflicted to get rid of those symptoms because then where do I
45:30
get my positive attention? Where do I get the confirmation
45:34
from? So sometimes, not always,
45:37
sometimes people come into therapy conflicted, not wanting
45:42
in a way to get better. So when they start to transfer
45:47
the transference, when they start to project it onto the
45:51
analyst and then wanting to impress them, wanting to behave
45:55
in the way that the analyst wants them to behave.
45:58
In this positive transference, they skip the part that wants to
46:02
stay sick for whatever reason and they go into the pleasing
46:07
the analyst and wanting to heal for them.
46:10
In this sense this is avoid at least a positive event.
46:16
Secondly, the analyst as the quasi parent also gains access
46:21
to the Uber age. They gain access to the above
46:24
eye just as the actual parents had the privileged access to the
46:29
Uber age of the child. In this way, psychoanalysis can
46:35
be used to re educate the patient to install and to them
46:40
positive new elements of the Uber age of the above eye so
46:45
that they are less conflicted and are less bothered by an
46:48
overly restrictive, overly judgmental voice inside of them
46:52
and becomes a more differentiated and more
46:55
benevolent voice. Floyd emphasizes though that
47:00
because of this privileged position of having access to the
47:04
Uber age to the above eye, analysts should be very careful
47:10
and emphasize. Here Floyd emphasizes the
47:12
independence of the patient. This should be done in a very
47:16
careful way and in small measures only.
47:20
This is the second advantage that is connected to positive
47:23
transference. The third one is that
47:26
transference allows insights into the patient's relationship
47:31
with the parents. So because the patient sees me
47:35
as the father, they start to behave to me in a certain way
47:39
through my inner resonance, through my understanding of how
47:43
I feel. I might ask the patient if this
47:48
is what they experienced in childhood.
47:50
So, for example, the patient is angry about me, right?
47:56
Because I'm the supposed father. But he's angry about, angry
48:01
about me in a very uncomfortable, stubborn, ugly
48:08
way. Because I perceive this, it
48:12
becomes a hypothesis for me as the analyst or the therapist,
48:16
and I might ask them if they experience something like this.
48:18
This is something that you were told that you are ugly, that you
48:22
are unattractive, that you are bothersome.
48:25
And then this might help the patient to further associate in
48:29
order to fill the gaps of his memory and the self
48:32
understanding. Now the transference can not
48:37
only be positive, it can turn negative.
48:40
And with negative risk transparency, there's also the
48:44
risk of losing the successes of the past.
48:47
And the analysis and also earlier insights into themselves
48:53
might be questioned by the by the patient, so that with a
48:58
negative transference, if it turns negative, they might toss
49:01
the baby out with a bathing water, so to speak.
49:06
The task of analysis in general is to unmask the supposedly
49:11
fresh life as a reflection of the past and to learn from it.
49:17
This is something that was important for Floyd.
49:20
If we are not understanding ourselves, integrating our past
49:24
into the eye, then we are doomed to repeat our maladapted
49:30
patterns again and again and again.
49:33
So when this is from a Freudian perspective now, when patients
49:37
might say, oh, I'm changing the job, it will.
49:39
Everything will be different. I'm having a new relationship
49:41
now. Everything will be different.
49:43
The analyst is quite cautious and has at least the attitude
49:48
and voices it appropriately with a certain caution.
49:54
Don't be too optimistic. After all, you're taking
49:58
yourself into the new work. You're taking yourself into the
50:03
new relationship. So continue to integrate so that
50:07
you can change. And here's a quote from Floyd.
50:11
The child is the father of the adult, which is a nice
50:15
mysterious quote. What it means is the child that
50:18
I have been is the one that raised me.
50:21
It turned into me. And in the sense also, as I said
50:25
before, that the roots of the neurosis lie in the first six
50:30
years of life and only show the symptoms later on.
50:34
Also in that sense, the child is the father of me as the adult.
50:41
So self knowledge is crucial in psychoanalysis in order to
50:46
strengthen the ego and also is aspect of this other quote that
50:53
I said before where it was I shall become.
50:57
And in psychoanalysis, the analysts wants the I to dare to
51:02
do the dangerous and unpleasant thing which is to face the drive
51:07
demands of the IT and to gain understanding of a maladaptive
51:13
above I, an Uber ish structure. To face these is very
51:18
uncomfortable. And psychoanalysis is a tool for
51:23
Floyd to help patients to dare this challenge, to dare facing
51:29
the parts of myself that are so uncomfortable.
51:33
OK, let me come to a few general aspects of psychoanalysis.
51:38
To a certain extent, according to Floyd, children are all
51:42
traumatized and here keep in mind the Latin root of the word
51:47
trauma, which means injury or hurt.
51:50
It is inevitable that children in their development are hurt
51:55
from the outside in the sense that the the drive demands of
52:01
the IT are frustrated are rejected when parents say no,
52:05
not now. This is in a sense for the very
52:09
weak eye of the young child. This is an injury, this is a
52:13
hurt and this is inevitable for Floyd.
52:17
But the child also to understand the difficulty in that the child
52:22
also has to master in just a few years, especially nowadays so
52:26
much more than in Floyd times. It has to master the cultural
52:29
development that humanity needed thousands of years for to become
52:35
a valuable member of society. Today, with all those
52:40
exaggerated demands on self-control, self development,
52:44
compatibility, the stressful work environments, the
52:48
interaction with social media, the complex forms of
52:53
relationship with the demands on love of and connectedness.
52:56
Nowadays, this is something that humanity developed over
53:00
thousands of years and a child, especially when it grows into
53:05
adolescence, is required to do this in just a few years.
53:10
So no wonder that this is such a high stress for the system.
53:14
No wonder that the eye has difficulties to absorb and
53:17
integrate at all. Again to summarize, in the
53:23
neurosis, the eye cannot longer longer fulfil the tasks of the
53:28
outside world and society, either because of the inner
53:33
pressures or because the demands of the outside are so strong.
53:37
So then activity is inhibited by restrictions and the self
53:43
devaluation of the uberish of the above eye.
53:48
This is the inhibiting factor inside of us and the remaining
53:52
energy that is left. What is left from those
53:55
inhibitions. The remaining energy is used up
53:59
in the pointless attempt to defend itself against the demand
54:04
of the IT. Because the IT continues to
54:06
press on, and so because of the weakened eye, the IT breaks into
54:13
the organization of the eye and splits it into contradictory
54:18
parts, contradictory aspirations, and unresolved
54:22
conflicts. Psychoanalysis initially
54:27
consists of intellectual interpretation.
54:30
This is how we gain the trust, this is how we start generally
54:33
explaining of what might happen and then letting the patient do
54:40
you know, find its way into this way of thinking.
54:43
So intellectual descriptions is the beginning of the
54:48
psychoanalysis for Floyd in order to on a provisional basis
54:55
fill the gaps so that later on the patient can do this on their
55:00
own with the accurate, with a complete filling of the gaps by
55:06
working on themselves and discovering their understanding
55:10
and discovering the understanding of their own past.
55:14
If parts of the authority are transferred to the analysts in
55:19
transparency that they're projected, the analysts
55:23
encourage the eye to take up the fight with the IT and overcome
55:27
this, overcome the resistance of the uba ish.
55:32
Then the patients deal with the unpleasantness of experiencing
55:36
all this, the memories that IT will bring up, the solving the
55:39
questions that IT will bring up, and they verbalize it in the
55:43
analysis. And the patients and the analyst
55:47
trace the intruded content contents back to its origins,
55:51
back into the neuroses of the first six years of life.
55:56
And this is what previously was unconsciously repressed.
56:03
This is what then becomes available to the eye.
56:06
Again. This is the integration into the
56:09
eye. I want to end with some
56:12
prerequisites that Floyd saw for a patient in order to engage
56:17
into his psychoanalysis. The patient needs a strong
56:21
desire for recovery because otherwise the conflicts, the
56:24
internal conflicts, will sabotage the process.
56:28
The patients need intellectual interests, an interest into
56:32
filling those gaps of the mind. Positive transference is
56:37
something that is typically necessary and used in
56:42
psychoanalysis and patients need the ability to supplement
56:48
sublimate sorry drives. This is something that I have
56:52
not described much before, But Dr. Sublimation is to take it
56:56
from its primitive source of the itch that is not quite
57:01
interested in how we solve this drive problem.
57:04
The eye solves the drive problem and we channel it into other
57:11
ways of satisfaction that are much more socially acceptable,
57:15
are much more acceptable to the outside world, for example
57:19
through career. So we supplement libidinous
57:24
demands through work, social activity, arts.
57:29
These are always how to deal with those Dr. demands of the IT
57:34
and channel them through more beneficial paths.
57:41
Disadvantages would be if patients had a tendency for
57:46
negative transference, if they are unwilling to do the
57:49
difficult psychological work of of facing oneself, confronting
57:55
oneself with those difficult energies.
57:58
Psychological inertia, when people are dull, have
58:01
difficulties to associate, cannot verbalize the stream of
58:04
consciousness, and as I mentioned before, if they have
58:08
quite developed need for mental illness.
58:14
Personally, when I look back at those works of the late Floyd, I
58:20
admire his style. He's very well aware of the
58:24
concept that he uses. He tries to be precise.
58:31
He doesn't want to be vague. He pushes the concepts that he
58:36
has developed to fruition. What does it mean to have an
58:42
Oedipus complex? What does it mean if the IT and
58:47
the Uber ish starts to have a battle, You know, with the I
58:51
sandwiched in between? So he developed those concept,
58:55
but I think he goes too far. He doesn't see where his
59:01
concepts come to a limit. Here he would have benefited
59:05
from a bit more of consciousness philosophy, because then it
59:11
would have been, I think, much more clear that how concepts
59:15
have their own limit and if we push them, they falsify
59:19
themselves. They become meaningless because
59:22
they are not valid as eternal truths.
59:24
They don't hold in each and every situation.
59:28
They are limited to a certain field where they make sense.
59:32
And I think that Floyd, with many of his concepts, he
59:36
overstepped the natural kind of sense that his quite useful
59:42
concepts like the IT, the unconscious, the Uber itch, his
59:47
psychosexual stages, he overstepped their meaning and he
59:52
tried to defend them where they shouldn't be defended because
59:57
they're just not valid. Also the focus of Floyd on the
1:00:02
psychosexual development. This he took too literally when
1:00:06
he spoke about the the angst, the fear of castration.
1:00:12
For example, he suggests in his writing that each and every boy
1:00:18
goes through the same process. Which is a literal fear of
1:00:24
someone, let's say the dad, coming and chopping off his
1:00:28
penis. And this week, from today's
1:00:31
perspective, and also I as a historically interested reader,
1:00:35
I cannot see that this isn't any way true.
1:00:38
He would have done better if he admitted that to a large extent
1:00:45
we have to understand these as symbolic.
1:00:48
So in a sense, I can understand that if in the if at work my
1:00:55
superior reprimands me, criticizes me in front of the
1:00:59
whole team, it feels like some sort of a castration that my
1:01:05
power is inhibited, that I'm exposed in my vulnerability.
1:01:11
So here I don't have to say that I go back to a literal fear of
1:01:15
being castrated. I think those concepts can
1:01:19
maintain their reach if Floyd had admitted that it can be
1:01:25
either literally or also meant in a more symbolic way.
1:01:30
All in all, for me, it's always interesting to go back to the
1:01:35
big characters, be it in philosophy or psychology.
1:01:38
I have the feeling that they knew much more of what they were
1:01:43
developing in those concepts. Floyd was in his time the
1:01:48
avant-garde or one of the avant-garde in developing
1:01:52
psychotherapy and it's the literature is rich.
1:01:56
I think it is interesting to go back and to read those with the
1:02:01
distance of the time, because I can distinguish for myself both
1:02:06
quite well the gems that are in there and also the obvious flaws
1:02:11
and mistakes that he made. This is it for today.
1:02:15
I hope I gave you a complex enough introduction into Floyd's
1:02:20
work. Maybe you pick up a book of
1:02:23
Floyd, Maybe you pick up literature on psychoanalysis and
1:02:27
you rediscover some of the concepts that you have learned
1:02:31
in those summaries. If you're interested in a
1:02:34
consultation with me, you'll find the link below.
1:02:38
Other than that, I'm happy to see you next time and I hope you
1:02:42
stay interested. And feel free also to subscribe
1:02:47
to my channel to stay informed when another new video pops up.
1:02:51
Thank you for your attention and see you next time.