Life and Death Instincts
In the 20th century, psychoanalysis expanded to include a new class of drives in addition to those mentioned earlier: life instincts and death instincts. Life instincts are those that deal with basic survival, pleasure, and reproduction; behaviors commonly associated with the life instinct include love, cooperation, and other prosocial actions. These instincts are important for sustaining the life of the individual as well as continuing the species. These are often called sexual instincts because the energy created by the life instincts is the psychosexual energy conceptualized as libido, but they also include such constructs as thirst, hunger, and pain avoidance. Conversely, death instincts emerge as self-destructive behavior, self-harm, and self-sabotage. Death instincts are often expressed as aggression or violence and are tempered by the life instincts (Georgescu, 2011).
Defense Mechanisms
The concept of defense mechanisms can be observed daily across cultures and contexts, even among those who are not familiar with psychoanalytic theory. These defenses are a function of the ego and protect the individual from experiencing anxiety and guilt provoked by the discord between the id and superego. Each serves as a protective emotional shield against inappropriate emotional responses to situations. There are 11 primary defense mechanisms:
Compartmentalization is a process of separating parts of the self from awareness of other parts and behaving as if one has separate sets of values.
Compensation is a process of psychologically counterbalancing perceived weaknesses by emphasizing strength in other areas.
Denial is refusing to accept reality and acting as if a painful event, thought, or feeling does not exist. It is considered one of the most primitive of the defense mechanisms because it is characteristic of very early childhood development.
Displacement is the redirecting of thoughts, feelings, and impulses from an object that gives rise to anxiety to a safer, more acceptable one.
Intellectualization is the use of a cognitive approach without the attendant emotions to suppress and attempt to gain mastery over the perceived disorderly and potentially overwhelming impulses.
Projection is the attribution of one’s undesired impulses to another.
Rationalization is the cognitive reframing of one’s perceptions to protect the ego in the face of changing realities.
Reaction formation is the converting of wishes or impulses that are perceived to be dangerous into their opposites.
Regression is the reversion to an earlier stage of development in the face of unacceptable impulses.
Repression is the blocking of unacceptable impulses from consciousness.
Sublimation is the channeling of unacceptable impulses into more acceptable outlets.
Transference and Countertransference
Transference, or the process of the client projecting their feelings onto another person or object, is one of the most important psychoanalytic concepts still utilized today. Once the transference is identified, the counselor assumes a blank screen position, engaging the client in exposing the unconscious motivation behind the individual’s defense mechanisms by welcoming all transferred attitudes, feelings, impulses, and desires that were generated in early life by adults whom the client considers important. It is assumed that the motivations will appear on their own during this process, and they may then be examined and redirected by the conscious.
Countertransference describes an intense personal emotional reaction to the client’s narrative, which biases the counselor and influences the counselor’s unbiased approach to the therapeutic relationship and process. Although transference will impede successful therapy, the momentary recognition of this reaction by the therapist illuminates the emotions elicited by others in the client’s life (Thomas, 2008).
APPLICATIONS
Overview
The psychodynamic approach still relies on the basic foundational tenet from psychoanalysis—that understanding the ways in which early experiences of the client have shaped their current motivations helps the client find interpersonal resolutions to their problems (Fulmer, 2018). Compared with traditional psychoanalytic practices, modern psychodynamic thought is comprehensive, versatile, and conceptualized as a system in its attempts to explain irrationality (Fulmer, 2018). Although this approach is still evolving, it is a more inclusive and cross-cultural approach, adopting cognitive and behavioral focal points to treat clients (Fulmer, 2018). The modern presuppositions and objectives provide a framework for modern psychodynamic theory and support its viability in today’s world.
Although there is no precise shift from analysis to dynamic in historical practice, counseling itself experienced a person-centered shift following the work of Carl Rogers, and shortly thereafter, psychodynamic practice infused components of object relations, transference-focused attachment, self-psychology, and family systems approaches and became the foundation of cognitive behavior therapy and, later, dialectical behavioral therapy. This evolving change in the application of classical techniques is seen as dynamic, and the centralized focus on analysis has moved dramatically from the therapist to the working alliance between therapist and client.
Goals of Counseling and Psychotherapy
The primary goal of modern approaches is to bring the drives of the id into consciousness, allowing them to be understood and addressed directly, thus reducing the client’s reliance on defense mechanisms to function in social contexts (Levenson, 2007). When symptoms are elucidated to bring the unconscious into consciousness or awareness, the ego is strengthened and clients learn to express their needs and wants within a realistic paradigm, resulting in a greater balance between the id and the superego. The ultimate goal is to resolve interpersonal conflicts by identifying and resolving the ways in which the client is demonstrating resistances, defenses, and misplaced drives based on prior traumatic experiences.
Modern Presuppositions and Objectives
Presuppositions. As theorists evolved the commonly held views and ideas of the traditional psychoanalytic approach, modern psychodynamic thought focuses on four major presuppositions: (a) Unseen forces behind the sciences are influential, (b) personality shapes experiences, (c) the past is powerful, and (d) psychic determinism is real (Fulmer, 2018). Unseen forces, including biological drives and impulses, psychological motivations, and cultural pressures expressed by clients, suggest a neural basis for the unconscious responsible for self-defeating thoughts. The client’s personality influences and shapes their development, defense processes, and manifestation of mental disorders, all of which are influenced by early attachment experiences. Repeating behaviors indicate that ruminating on past experiences impedes current coping skills. And psychic determinism is the concept that a client is unable to be present and have autonomy because of influences of past experiences, which leave the client with little self-determination (Fulmer, 2018).
With these four presuppositions, modern psychodynamic theorists further substantiate the importance of the unconscious on biological impulses and psychological motives (Berlin, 2011). Additionally, a reexamination of personality illuminates the biopsychosocial philosophy that guides the exploration of the systemic nature of one’s
