Symbols of Freudian and Relational Psychoanalysis

The First Force in Psychology

Recent brain scans have shed light on how the brain simulates the future. These simulations are done mainly in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the CEO of the brain, using memories of the past… There is a struggle between different parts of the brain concerning the future, which may have desirable and undesirable outcomes. Ultimately it is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex that mediates between these and makes the final decisions. Some neurologists have pointed out that this struggle resembles… the dynamics between Freud’s ego, id and superego.
Michio Kaku

This chapter will focus on the two major psychoanalytic schools of thought: Freudian and relational psychoanalysis. Relational psychoanalysis expands the Freudian view of a libidinal-driven unconscious to an unconscious that seeks emotional attachment to satisfying interpersonal relationships.

Psychology stands on the symbolic shoulders of Sigmund Freud. His ideas permeate all Four Forces of Psychology. His contribution to the understanding of human behavior has rarely been matched. Because of Freud, psychology developed personality and developmental theories, studied the role of sexuality and aggression, and most importantly explored the world of the unconscious. For clinical psychologists Freud laid the foundation, with the concepts of transference and countertransference, of what constitutes effective psychotherapeutic treatment.

Freud was not the end but the beginning of psychoanalysis. By the 1980s there was a paradigm shift to a post-Freudian world toward a focus on emotional attachment. This led to a reassessment of attachment in early childhood. Revised were many of the sacred psychoanalytic beliefs, especially the role of sexuality and aggression in human development. Influenced by object-relations, childhood attachment, interpersonal relationships, intersubjectivity, and feminism, relational psychoanalysts took Freudian psychology in a new direction.