Complete 10 page APA formatted essay: Psychoanalysis, Religion and Salvation.Download file to see previous pages Psychoanalysis is a large body of literature, created by many authors sharing common as

Complete 10 page APA formatted essay: Psychoanalysis, Religion and Salvation.

Psychoanalysis is a large body of literature, created by many authors sharing common assumptions about personality dynamics. Today, it is known as a personality theory, as a theory and practice of psychotherapy, and then as a psychology of culture.

Psychoanalysis still exists and refuses to die. In spite of the Freud bashers, the complete disregard of contemporary psychoanalytic theory in undergraduate textbooks, the pressure of managed care and graduate schools' focus on empirically validated treatment models, psychoanalysis appears to be entering an exciting new phase: new research in cognitive psychology, infant studies, and trauma support long-held psychoanalytic concepts (e.g., the unconscious, defenses, dissociation, the importance of early childhood experiences, etc.). Within its own circles, new varieties of psychoanalytic theory (e.g., Intersubjectivity theory, Relational psychoanalysis) offer new opportunities to interface with contemporary philosophy, sociology, and literature and gender studies.

And as the discipline of psychology continues to open its doors to a renewed rapprochement with religion and spirituality, psychoanalysis is following suit. This is perhaps the most surprising advancement of all.

There have always been prominent psychoanalytic thinkers who have grappled with religion in positive ways but the typical clinical psychoanalyst has been prone to pathologise religion as either a punitive superego or as a defense against drive derivatives a la Freud. Yet the publication of several new books (Schermer, 2003. Sorenson, 2004) suggests that psychoanalysts are starting to believe that religion may actually have something to offer psychoanalysis.

Theoretical Principles of Psychoanalysis

Freud suggested two assumptions in characterising his approach. The first states that all psychic processes are strictly determined (no accidents, chance events, or miracles), and the second states that the unconscious mental processes exist, and exert significant influences on behavior. These unconscious forces shape much of the individual's emotional and interpersonal experiences.

The Unconscious

Observable behaviors like momentary, fleeting, childish, irrational thoughts are possibly determined through the unconscious processes. The emphasis on the unconscious part of the personality can be summed up as follows: part of the personality is unconscious, and it is the more important part. the unconscious is the repository of significant early experience. in the adult, unconscious ideas are projected, creating severe distortions of reality, especially interpersonal reality.

Motivation

The psychoanalytic view of human motivation is often regarded as utterly pessimistic. Judging by their conscious and unconscious drives, humans may become nasty and brutish, aggressive, infantile, libido driven. Beyond this bleak picture of immorality and perversity, however, lies the capacity for sublimation, love and culture.

Personality Development

Freud's psychoanalysis on development focused on psychosexual development. That is the transformation, molding, and sometimes perversion, of biologically determined erotic drives in early childhood. The Oedipus complex is its focal point woven around the child's attachment to its parents as love objects or identification models between the ages of three and six. Early childhood experiences serve as historical precedents in every individual's life, and in the life of every human culture. The reconstruction of personality development is based on the infant's and child's way of thinking, which is impossible to recover. It is based on behavioral observations and sometimes inferred, like unconscious processes.

The central issue defining psychoanalysis is the never-ending impact of childhood. The infants' irrational wish fulfillment is supposed to be left behind by the adult, but childhood is always alive behind the faade of adulthood.