My Psychoanalytic Journey

Introduction Greenson presupposes Freud’s tension-discharge model. According to this model — which Greenson’s mentor, Otto Fenichel outlines in The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis — external or internal stimuli can cause excitation or tension (an unpleasant feeling). When we experience this excitation or tension, we want to discharge (reduce) it and return to our previous state of relaxation. We’re guided here by the principle of constancy, as we don’t necessarily want to remove the tension but simply want it to return to its previous level. In order to comprehend a mental event thoroughly, we should analyze it from six different points of view.  The dynamic point of view holds that for every tension we experience, we might have some internal forces pushing to discharge the tension and other internal forces pushing to maintain the tension. A slip of the tongue is an example of conflicting inner forces at play. When I inadvertently say something sexual, my id feels tension (sexual

Conscious and Preconscious Freud begins this work by dividing and categorizing. There are two types of mental elements, conscious and unconscious. And there are two types of unconscious elements, preconscious and repressed. Preconscious elements are thoughts that might not be conscious at the moment but can easily become conscious. Repressed elements are not as easily accessible, as they prevented from internal forces from becoming conscious and can only be made conscious through considerable effort (e.g., analysis). Ego Freud writes that the above distinctions are limited in their practicality, and so he proceeds to introduce new terminology. The ego, he writes, organizes mental processes, regulating the discharge of our excitations, repressing certain unconscious material. It contains elements that are conscious, but since it’s the ego that causes resistance in psychoanalysis, it follows that part of it is unconscious. He next explains how it is that something that was unconscious ca

Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning (1911) “We have long observed,” Freud begins, “that every neurosis has as its result, and probably therefore as its purpose, a forcing of the patient out of real life, an alienating of him from reality.” Neurotics turn away from reality because they find it unbearable. The unconscious processes are guided by the pleasure principle, meaning that they strive to gain pleasure and avoid unpleasure. We see the pleasure principle at work in our dreams, which Freud sees as the expression of our innermost wishes. We also see the pleasure principle at work in our tendency to avoid painful situations, which of course includes the act of repression. The pleasure principle is also responsible for what he calls “motor discharge.” This discharge unburdens “the mental apparatus of accretions of stimuli” by “sending innervations into the interior of the body (leading to expressive movements and the play of features and to manifestations of affec

Arguments for the Unconscious Freud offers a number of arguments for the existence of the unconscious. Argument #1: The gaps in consciousness we experience necessitate the existence of the unconscious. An example of a gap in consciousness, he points out that sometimes an idea might come into our mind and that we don’t know where this idea came from. He seems to be presupposing a type of causality or determinism, meaning that each idea we have must be caused by a previous idea. For example, if I’m now thinking of a cat, it must have been the case that I saw a cat or that you were talking about a cat, etc. But experience shows us that sometimes I’ll be thinking about nothing evidently related to cats, and then, poof, the idea of a cat comes into my mind. Something must have caused this thought of a cat, and if I can’t state what it was, then it follows that that something must have been outside my consciousness. Argument #2: The fact that everything we know is not always in our conscious

Recommendations to Physicians Practicing Psychoanalysis (1912) Listening.  Freud writes that the analyst should listen to his patient in a particular way, not focusing on anything specific the patient has said but maintaining the same “evenly-suspended attention” at all times. If the analyst concentrates on something specific, his attention will become fixed on that idea, and he will consequently miss some of the other things the patient says. This type of listening is the “necessary counterpart” to the fundamental rule: Just as the patient should say everything that comes to his mind without censure — no matter how illogical or unseemly something might seem — so too the analyst must give “equal notice to everything” the patient says says. In so doing, the analyst allows himself to hear the patient’s unconscious material. Put differently, the analyst is turning “his own unconscious like a receptive organ towards the transmitting unconscious of the patient. He must adjust himself to the

Introduction Kernberg observed early in his career that borderline patients exhibited selective impulse control. He further observed that these individuals alternated between different ego states and had little emotional connection between these different states. One woman, for instance, alternated between being extremely afraid of sex and being extremely promiscuous, both conditions “being temporarily ego syntonic during their respective appearance.” She was able to control her impulses in other areas of her life, just not when she was in the promiscuous ego state. Another patient would alternately regard Kernberg as all-good and all-bad. When this man saw Kernberg as all-good he had no awareness of having any negative feelings for him even though he could easily remember those times he regarded him as all-bad. When Kernberg would remind the patient of the times he had seen him as all-bad, the man would experience intense anxiety. Kernberg consequently concluded that splitting the ego