The History of

Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud
 1856-1923

 Born “Sigismund Schlomo Freud” – ethnically and

culturally, he was a Czech Jew

 Started practicing as a medical doctor in 1881

 Never abandoned the attempt to establish
psychoanalysis as medicine, science
“The Talking Cure”
 Freud began hypnotizing and talking to (mostly “hysterical”) patients
 Anna O. coined the term “the Talking Cure,” which became codified as “the
Fundamental Rule:”
free association
“We instruct the patient to put himself into a state
of quiet, unreflecting self-observation, and to
report to us whatever internal observations he is
able to make…[taking care not to] exclude any of
them...”
(from Freud’s Introductory Lectures on
Psychoanalysis)
“The Confusion of Tongues”
 The veracity of reports of abuse was a matter of
controversy with Freud himself, and with
disciples of his,
most notably Sàndor Ferenczi:

 Ferenczi’s groundbreaking essay, “The confusion

of tongues,” is an iconic testament to
a hermeneutic of trust vs.
a hermeneutic of suspicion
The Interpretation of
Dreams (1900)
 Perhaps Freud’s most important work

 Largely a result of his self-analysis, and of hearing

patients frequently free-associate to dreams

 Introduced the concepts of:

 The unconscious
 Repression

 Wish fulfillment (and the consequent implications for symptom

formation)
 The Oedipus Complex

And led to…

The Topographical Model
1. Conscious
(immediately accessible)

2. Preconscious
(accessible, with effort)

3. Unconscious
(not subconscious – unconscious:
inaccessible, except indirectly)
The Structural Model
1. Id
(“das Es” – the It)
“Wo Es war, soll Ich
werden”
2. Ego
–
(“das Ich” – the I) “Where It was,
there I shall become.”
3. Super-Ego
(“das Über-Ich” – the Over-I)
Sex and Death
 Eros and Thanatos:the Life and Death Drives
 The economy of energies, of libido

“Much will be gained if we succeed in transforming…hysterical misery into common

unhappiness. With a mental life that has been restored to health, [people] will be better
armed against the unhappiness.'"
Psychosexual Development
The scandal of childhood sexuality – of “polymorphous perversity” – is better understand as
eroticism, i.e. a libidinal expression and experience of Eros.

(Something of an inspiration for Erikson’s and Mahler’s

developmental timelines.)
Other important clinical concepts:

 Only interpret; never gratify, never suggest.

• To gratify or suggest would “alloy the pure gold of psychoanalysis with the dross of
psychotherapy”
• Though to his credit, Freud (and other early analysts) provided a lot of free or low-cost
treatment
 The analyst/therapist as a blank screen: neutral, detached, strictly
observing
• A “one-person psychology” – everything is about what is going on in the analysand/patient
 Transference
 Resistance
Analysis: The Next Generation
 Freud fled to London during WWI
 Thus it was in England, even before Freud’s death in 1923, that the
next generation of psychoanalysis began to take shape

 Object relations theory came to the fore in the UK in the 1940s

 Its proponents were originally termed “the British Middle Group” or
“the Independents”
But in the middle of, independent of, whom?
The Adventure
Continues!
 Anna Freud and Melanie Klein engaged in a
fierce rivalry as to who was the “true heir” to
Freud’s legacy
 Both traditions developed followings, though
Klein’s contributions have been more influential
over time
Interpersonal Psychology
 Across the pond, Harry Stack Sullivan
made a clean break from Freud and
developed his own theory more or less
from scratch
 Interpersonal Ψ closely analyzes the
interactional patterns between people
 Itstresses the actions people take to avoid
anxiety
 This school was something of a black
sheep in Ψα until recently
Ego  Anna Freud (Freud’s youngest) developed Ego

Psychology Psychology; Heinz Hartmann is another big

name in Ego Ψ

 Ego Ψ focuses on the ego’s adaptation to reality

and its management of libido/aggression, e.g.
through:
 Defense mechanisms
 Reality testing
 Impulse control
 Affect regulation
Melanie Klein
1882 - 1960
• Born in Catholic Vienna – Raised in a rigidly orthodox Jewish
family.
• Klein’s family was plagued by financial problems, guilt, envy,
and competition.
• Sister died when Klein was 4
• Father died when she was 18
• Brother died when she was 20 (alcohol & drugs)
• Lived in Budapest where she was exposed to Freud’s work and
was analyzed by Ferenczi
• Invited by Ernest Jones to present at BPS on child analysis.
• Son Hans dies in Budapest.
Melanie Klein
1882 - 1960
• Multiple loses in Klein’s life propelled her consider the role of love,
hate, loss, and reparation in the human psyche.
• Theory of Motivation
• Transitional figure between drive and relational models
 1920’s Libidinal Focus
 1930’s Aggression/Internal Destructiveness
 1930 – 1945 Love and Desire for Reparation (Introduction of Two Positions –
Paranoid & Depressive)
 1946 – 1960 Balances & synthesizes work
• Object Relations exist from the beginning of life.
• Object Relations are modeled after both external and internal objects.
• Love & Hate (Tension between integration and disintegration)
Melanie Klein
1882 - 1960
• Theory of Development
• Paranoid & Schizoid Position
• Persecutory fantasies of annihilation/death
• Associated mechanisms = splitting, idealization, & denial
• Feelings of Love and Hate are kept separate via splitting
• Depressive Position
• Feelings of Hate and love are integrated.
• Objects (relationships) are experienced as whole.
• Interactions with Objects creates anxiety (fear of destructiveness)
Melanie Klein
1882 - 1960
• Psychic Structure
• Psychic energy is structured and directional
• Ego is aligned with love (Relational Seeking), Id with hate, and Superego with parental
images
• Aggression is viewed as constitutional (Id), while good is externally acquired (from parents)
• Theory of Psychopathology
• Conflicts between impulses (love & hate)
• Constitutional aggression & early parental interactions
• Content & nature of relations with objects
Melanie Klein
1882 - 1960

• Theory of Change
• Worked primarily with children
• Observation and interpretation of play – equivalent to free association
• Focus of interpretations is on unconscious wishes and conflicts between love and hate.
Melanie Klein
Central concepts in Kleinian Ψ include:

 Projective identification (this was

integral to the development of OR and
“two-person” psychologies)
 The depressive position vs. the
paranoid-schizoid position (Ogden has
added the autistic-contiguous position)
 Envy vs. gratitude
 A focus on the biological, the primal,
and the downright unpleasant (e.g.
hatred and destructiveness)
W. R. D. Fairbairn
 The big game-changer:
“Libido is not pleasure-seeking,
but object-seeking.”
 He also gave much consideration to schizoid
phenomena, which he believed to be central.
 Psychopathology is about attachments to “bad
objects.”
Fairbairn’s
Endopsychic Structure:

* More commonly referred

to as the “Antilibidinal
Ego”
W. R. D. Fairbairn
• Theory of Motivation
• Relationship is the primary psychological drive.
• Theory of Development
• Infantile  Transitional  Mature Interdependence
• Parental failure leads to a fracturing of the ego  Source of Psychopathology
• Psychic Structure
• Central Ego
• Exciting Objects
• Rejecting Objects
W. R. D. Fairbairn
• Theory of Change
• Regression to uncover fragmented ego
• Uncovering ways in which a person’s relationships have been affected by
relational and developmental arrests.
• Moral Defense
• “It’s better to be a devil in a world ruled by God, than a saint in a world ruled by
the devil.”
D. W. Winnicott
1869-1971
• Born into a prosperous middle class family.
• In 1916 reading Medicine at Jesus College, Cambridge.
• Served in Navy during WWI
• In 1920 developed a specialty in pediatrics.
• In 1927, Winnicott is accepted into BPS for training.
• Analyzed by preeminent psychoanalysts: Melanie Kline
and Joan Riviere.
• Psychiatric Consultant to Government during WWII –
Radio Broadcasts to mothers during the war.
• Following the war, Winnicott was physician in charge of
the Child Dept. of the Institute of Psychoanalysis (23
years).
D. W. Winnicott
Three of the ten most popular psychoanalytic articles in the world are by
Winnicott.

 “The quintessential developmental psychologist:”

Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment
 “Transitional objects and transitional phenomena –
[Play] and the first not-me possession”
 “The good-enough mother”
 Primary maternal preoccupation
 The environmental vs. the holding mother
 Regression vs. withdrawal
 True and false selves
 “There is no such thing as an infant”
“…as independence”
D. W. Winnicott
• Theory of Motivation
• Primary human motivation is relationship, beginning with one’s relationship with the mother,
“There is no such thing as a baby, only a nursing couple.”
• Theory of Development
• Absolute Dependence  Relative Dependence  Mature Interdependence
• Psyche and Soma are linked in early life.
• Gradual (and necessary) failure of the environment (parents) facilitates growth.
• Capacity for play is integral to individual growth (Transitional Space)
• Psychic Structure
• Self and False Self
D. W. Winnicott
• Theory of Psychopathology
• True Self vs. False Self became Winnicott’s prevailing view of origins of psychopathology
• False Self  develops due to maternal impingement (child is forced to accommodate the
demands from external reality )
• Treatment
• Treatment is an opportunity to compensate for deficits.
• Regression to the point of developmental arrest.
• False self can be discovered and relinquished, allowing room for the true self to emerge.
Harry Guntrip
1901 - 1975
• Father was a minister
• Mother was schizoid and occasionally violent
• Brother died when Harry was 3 – Haunted by the trauma for the remainder of his
life.
• Was neglected by his mother and sent away to live with his aunt.
• Guntrip was a minister for 18 years  Wrote a book about psychology for ministers
and social workers
• Concluded that philosophy and religion were insufficient to deal with the issues that
he encountered as a minister.
• Led to interest in Psychoanalysis.
• In 1946 decided to become a psychoanalyst
• Was analyzed by Ronald Fairbarin
Harry Guntrip
1901 - 1975
• Theory of Motivation
• Fundamental drive for relationship with internal and external objects.
• Theory of Development
• Combination of Klein’s notion of internal and external objects and Fairbairn’s
concept of internalizing bad objects.
• Schizoid phenomenon: Struggle between regression and outward human
relatedness.
• Psychic Structure
• Fairbairn’s endopsychic structure
• Divided libidinal ego into regressed ego and S-M ego
Harry Guntrip
1901 - 1975
• Theory of Psychopathology
• The regressed ego  core of all psychopathology
• Early Trauma due to inadequate parenting is ”frozen in time”; the infantile ego remains alive
within the regressed ego, the heart of the personality.
• Schizoid Phenomena  Tension between relatedness and regression
Harry Guntrip
1901 - 1975
• Change
• Psychotherapy is concerned with recovery of whole self and establishing unity.
• 3 Stages of Tx
• Oedipal – Deals with the conflicts between love and hate, and the loss of omnipotence (reality
of dyads vs. triads)
• Schizoid Compromise – Transference is focal; therapeutic dyad encounters the struggle to be
“half in and half out” of relationship; uncovering defenses.
• Regression and Regrowth – Reach and release the withdrawn, schizoid, isolated part of the
self.
Michael Balint
1869 - 1970
• Born Mihaly Maurice Bergsmann in Budapest
• Changes his name to Mihaly Balint against his father’s will and left the Jewish faith
to join Unitarian Christianity.
• Served in WWI
• Completed medical studies in 1918
• Attended lectures by Sandor Ferenczi
• He and his wife studied psychoanalysis together in Berlin and England.
• Balint lost both his parents to suicide and his wife in 1944
• Worked with Bion at the Tavistock Clinic in London.
• Famous of creating “Balint Grops” for physicians to process challenges with
patients.
• Severed as president of BPS
Michael Balint
1869 - 1970
• Theory of Motivation
• Rooted in Relationship, beginning with mother-infant relationship.
• Theory of Development
• Three Levels – Each with own way of thinking and relating
• Creative Activity
• Two Person
• Three Person
• Each level also linked to particular therapeutic needs
Michael Balint
1869 - 1970
• View of Psychic Structure
• Level 1: No external object needs
• Level 2: exclusively two person relationship (level of basic fault)
• Level 3: level at which a person is capable of a three sided experience (Oedipal
complex)
• Key Concepts
• Basic Fault: sense that something is wrong of missing
• Theory of Psychopathology
• Rupture at level of two person experience
Michael Balint
1869 - 1970
• Theory of change
• Begins with level 3 (oedipal conflicts)
• Treatment progresses to level 2  understanding two person (parent – child)
ruptures
• Goal is regression with the potential for a new relational beginning
Self Pyschology
and the rise of narcissism
 Kohut developed Self Psychology in the 60s
– it is still being developed today.
 The emphasis is on empathy –
understanding the needs (selfobject needs,
twinning, mirroring, or idealizing needs,
etc.) of the patient.

 Kernberg did much to integrate ego

psychology with OR. He proposed a more
Otto Kernberg confrontational approach to narcissism. Heinz Kohut