What is Psychoanalytic theory and who are its founders? Psychoanalytic theory is used to explore the individuals experience within his interactions with others and the society at large. The main focus of this theory is to explore and understand the individuals underlying feelings, thoughts, and emotions. The goal of psychoanalytic theory is to allow individuals to explore, identify and express their motives and desires in a healthy fashion.
Founders of this theory include Nathan Ackerman, Murray Bowen, Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, Carl Whitaker, Don Jackson, & Salvador Minuchin. With time, many of these psychoanalytically trained therapists decided to move away from psychoanalytic work to focus on the individuals interaction with its environment. The introduction of systems dynamics allowed these therapists to transition from focusing on the internal workings of the individual to focusing on their experience with the environment.
Key Concepts Explorations within the psychoanalytic theory focus on four dimensions:
• Internal experience
• History of the experience
• How the partner/family trigger the experience
• How the context/interaction from the therapist may contribute to the couple/families situation.
The goal of psychoanalytic theory is to assist people in understanding their motives and helping them in resolving conflicts with others by allowing individuals to express their feelings in a healthy and positive way.
Role of the Therapist
Therapists foster insight in families by helping them understand their basic motives by releasing repressed emotions and resolve conflicts over expressing those yearnings.
Listen without becoming intrusive.
Express genuine empathy but do not offer advice and do not reassure or confront families.
Therapist decides who should be included in treatment and who should be focused on.
Work to create a climate of trust for families so they can work through old wounds and deep experiences; convenes families to help them learn to be independent as well as individuals.
To help families/couples with development and to find what they were deprived of as individuals; finding a sense of "I" other than what has been projected onto individual(s) by the family/significant other (Becker & Shalgi, 2002).
How Change Occurs
Couples and families will naturally have resistance at first and defend against revealing their innermost feelings. Therapy sessions will allow for couples and families to identify what lies in their unconscious (innermost feelings, unmet needs, and projective mechanisms.) in a safe environment.
The therapist helps the clients to have the emotional experiencing they need to resolve unconscious issues, allowing the clients to grow individually and have healthy relationships.
Techniques and Interventions Psychoanalytic theory consist of four basic techniques; including: listening, empathy, interpretations, & analytic neutrality.
• Listening to the client without the need or desire to feel pressure to "do" something about their situation is important in psychoanalytic theory and practice.
• Empathy allows the client to open up to the therapist.
• Interpretations can be made when clarification of hidden aspects of the experience are of interest.
• Analytic neutrality can be established when the therapist concentrates on understanding the problem without feeling the need to solve it.
In psychoanalytic theory, the focus is less on the group or family and more on the individuals experience of the overlying situation.
How the Model Views Problems
This model sees intra-relational issues between the couple or family being rooted in unconscious issues such as conflicts from their own families or unmet needs from childhood. People need insight into what these problems are, but just having insight is not enough to bring awareness and to heal from these problems. Clients need to get in touch with the "emotional experience" of the root problem. Having these experiences is the only way to heal and allow for a client to grow and be able to have healthy relationships.