Freudianism is a classical, orthodox psychoanalysis that derives all the problems of an adult from the sexual instinct.
In the broadest sense, Freudianism refers to classical (orthodox) psychoanalysis, in contrast to neo-Freudianism, Jung’s analytical psychology, and Adler’s individual psychology. In a stricter and more precise sense, this term refers to the teachings of Z. Freud in the form in which it was created by him in the period from 1900 to 1938. Neo-Freudians remain within the framework of Freudianism as long as they accept the scheme of It — Super-I and Self, but go beyond the framework of orthodox Freudianism when they see the relationship of these principles in a different way. In the concept of classical psychoanalysis, I and society, Id and Super-Ego, are presented as hostile, antagonistic to each other. Eric Erikson, developing psychoanalysis, began to distinguish between rituals and ritualisms and argued that the relationship between the individual and society can be a relationship of cooperation that ensures the harmonious development of the individual.
Psychoanalysis, in the exact sense of the word, is different from Freudianism. Many researchers who are close to psychoanalysis do not accept Freudianism. Similarly, regarding the psychodynamic approach: Freudianism is a kind of psychodynamic approach, but the psychodynamic approach is wider than Freudianism, it is not reduced to it.
The main theses by which Freudianism is recognized:
- A person is selfish by nature, all human actions and all his problems are ultimately based on repressed sexual desires (libido). Neurosis is formed as a result of the collision of sexual desires with the inability to satisfy them. The symbolism of dreams and reservations has a predominantly sexual meaning. See details →
- All children go through the Oedipus complex. Boys begin to desire their mother and hate their father as a rival, girls similarly direct their incestuous desires towards their mother, but in addition begin to experience penis envy.
- Psychosexual development passes through five phases: oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital.
The psychoanalytic approach according to Z. Freud includes five fundamental principles: dynamic, economic, structural, the principle of development, the principle of adaptation.
The psychoanalytic heritage is based on these principles, for which the following provisions are the most significant:
- Of primary importance are human instinctual impulses, their expression and transformation and, most importantly, their suppression, whereby one avoids painful feelings or experiences of unpleasant thoughts, desires and the impact of consciousness.
- Belief that such repression is essentially sexual, that the cause of the disorder is an abnormal libidinal or psychosexual development
- The idea that the roots of abnormal psychosexual development are in the distant past, in childhood conflicts or traumas, especially with regard to the parental oedipal complex, expressed in the classic desire for a parent of the opposite sex
- Confidence in resistance to the identification of the Oedipus complex, its rapid recovery
- The idea that, in essence, we are dealing with a struggle between biological internal impulses (or instincts — Id) and the Ego acting as a defense against external reality — in the general context of moral rules or standards (Super-Ego)
- Adherence to the concept of mental determinism, or causality, according to which mental phenomena, like behavior, are undeniably not changed by chance, but are associated with events that precede them, and, if not made conscious, are involuntarily the basis for repetition
The goal of psychotherapy in classical psychoanalysis is to understand and resolve internal emotional conflicts that arose in the earliest relationships, determine the subjective meaning of subsequent experience and are reproduced in later life. The main method is the analysis of free associations.