Similarly, as the Einstein of Psychology, Freud was the first great psychologist and psychiatrist humanity ever had. Part of his theory has been surpassed, however, by others but the fundamental still remains and, like the theory of relativity, belongs to the scientific heritage of mankind.
If our dreams and future projects influence and shape our present, the same occurs with our traumas and past experiences. Freud proved that both the negative as well as the positive experiences present in our subconsciousness inadvertently surface to our consciousness, influencing and even determining the choices, feelings, desires and decisions that we make at the present moment.
Our past is much more than our historical memory which contains our identity, that is, who we are to others and who we are to ourselves. Freud proved that this past is not “dead” in the sense that it has ceased to exist. The proverb that alludes to a physical law of “passed waters do not move mills” does not apply to human existence. Effectively, in human nature, past waters do move mills. And they move us by definitively influencing our present behaviour so much so that we resemble airplanes that on reaching cruising altitude start to operate on autopilot.
Psychoanalysis is both a type of therapy and a theory of personality that emphasizes that the main cause of our behaviour resides in the unconscious. The goal is to know and bring to consciousness the material in the subconscious in order to analyze it and neutralize the power it has over us, and the influence it exerts on our behaviour. What we know of our past we can control, because to know means to possess, to control; what we don’t know of our past, controls us.
Trinitarian or tridimensional mind
Like God, human beings are also one and triune. They have an individual dimension and a social dimension in such a way that one cannot exist alone but co-exists with two others. The existence of one presupposes the existence of two others, as we saw in a previous articles. In addition to the undeniable social dimension, we are social even in our own individuality. Our mind is not monolithic, or made up of a single piece, it could not function if it was made in that way.
Like everything that God creates, our mind is also trinitarian or tridimensional, because it is divided into three parts, three different partitions that interact with each other in the best interest of the person. Frequently, this interaction assumes a form of an interior dialogue that we have with ourselves. Simplistically, we can say that one part, the oldest, represents our interests, the second the interests of the society and finally, the last one is the arbitrator that tries to harmonize each other’s claims and decides the best way.
What then will this child become?
(…) All these things were talked about throughout the entire hill country of Judea. All who heard them pondered them and said, ‘What then will this child become?’ For, indeed, the hand of the Lord was with him. Luke 1:65-66
At birth, we have only one of the parts – the id – the other two entities come later, as we grow and develop, they appear relatively quickly, in such a way that by around the age of 5, according to Freud, or by the age of 7 as we believe today, our personality is completely formed and the rest of our life, according to Freudian determinism, is pure repetition.
The belief remains that the first few years of our lives are foundational to the rest of our lives. As infants, we are virgins in every way. Without anything written in our mind, the first facts naturally carve a deeper impression than the second or third and so on; when we are adults or seniors, very few things have the power to impress us anymore.
3 levels of consciousness
The diagram illustrated in this article shows a bust of Sigmund Freud inside the sun, indicating that it is his understanding that we use today regarding the human psyche. Like the picture shows, Freud used the iceberg metaphor to explain the composition and functioning of our psyche. More than two-thirds of the iceberg’s volume is below the waterline – and so it is with our mind.
There is in our mind an invisible “waterline” that divides the conscious from the unconscious. The mind is divided into three compartments: the Id, the Ego and the Superego – that correspond to three different levels of consciousness. As the image indicates, the Ego and superego are subdivided into two parts – one part is submerged in the unconscious and the other above the water line in the conscious. The Id is entirely in the unconscious.
The unconscious mind
Our subconscious is made up of feelings, emotions, needs, desires, impulses and instincts that are beyond our consciousness which doesn’t have access to them. In other words, it is as if they don’t exist. Our consciousness is not prepared to deal with these intimate and secret desires. If they were to emerge freely into our consciousness, they would disturb our daily life in such a way that we could become completely dysfunctional.
Because they are disturbing, dangerous and threaten the peace, harmony and balance of our mind, our psyche represses them in the subconscious which, in this case, functions as a maximum security prison. Our consciousness does not have access to these repressed desires, feelings and instincts, but they on the other hand have access to our consciousness as uninvited guests and influence our behaviour from thought to feeling and action. They influence and in some cases even determine our behaviour without us knowing how, when or in what way.
Much of the subconscious is formed by the two basic survival instincts that Freud calls Eros, the life instinct or affectivity, and Thanatos, the death instinct or aggression. These are like the positive and negative poles of our psychic energy, and are present here as a raw energy storage, without being transformed or sublimated for everyday use. In the subconscious lies all the negative and traumatic childhood experiences, so painful that the child is forced to disconnect from them because his childhood consciousness or mind is not strong enough at the time to deal with them.
As we shall see later, the superego is the last entity to arise in our mind and is formed by the cultural, moral and legal restrictions that society imposes on us. Despite appearing during the child’s socialization period, like the diagram shows, part of this superego is also submerged in the subconscious.
Carl Jung (1875-1961) was a disciple of Freud, but later left the master not so much for his psychological principles, but for Freud’s atheism as the latter understood that religion was a sick consolation that prevented human beings from developing and being fully mature.
Jung deepens the unconscious and subdivides it into two: the individual unconscious and the collective unconscious which is older and somehow precedes the former. The collective unconscious are ancestral memories that are organized into archetypes or themes and when a person’s existential situation requires it, the collective unconscious surfaces to consciousness influencing our behaviour. There are archetypes for every situation in our lives. The experiences of our ancestors on any subject are organized into these archetypes that all individuals have in common in their collective unconscious.
These archetypes exist in the form of thoughts, symbols, images, and memories; they are a model, a paradigm, a prototype that tells us what to expect of others and how we should behave in every situation of our lives. For example, there is an archetype or concept called “mother” that regulates the way how mothers should act with their children and children with their mothers, what can or cannot be expected from the other, what we can or cannot do.
Taboos are the clearest examples of what archetypes are; for example, the taboo of incest prohibits sexual relationships between parents and children, and between siblings. The taboo of parricide prohibits children from raising their hands aggressively against their parents. These are all in the collective unconscious part of our superego.
The preconscious mind
Facts, thoughts, feelings, emotions that we are not aware of at the present moment, but are within our grasp if called for, reside in the preconscious; we can look for them like we search for a book in a library. The mind is like a store window that displays the most important items in front, but has many more items stored in the back to fulfill orders. For example, I don’t constantly think about my phone number or email address, but if someone asks me for this information I can provide it immediately, as it is stored and organized in my preconscious.
This material is not in the conscious or the unconscious mind, but in an intermediate state. What distinguishes this material from the material in the unconscious is the fact that a person has more power and control over it and is not accidentally influenced by it. Most of the time it comes to our conscious mind only when it is solicited, unlike the material in our unconscious mind over which we have no control whatsoever.
With the exceptions of traumas and taboos, the material in the preconscious has the same nature as the material in the unconscious – memories, feelings, thoughts, facts etc. – except that it is not repressed and is always accessible to the conscious mind like a database.
The conscious mind
The conscious mind contains thoughts, memories, feelings, and desires that we are aware of in the present moment, in the here and now of our lives. Comparable to the RAM of a computer, or even the processor, our consciousness is the operating memory that reads and processes the data that the preconscious or senses provide; it is the rational thought or reason that analyzes, decides and sets the action.
Consciousness is the ability to know and reflect on our reality; we are conscious of what we perceive through our five senses, of what we remember. Our consciousness is the attention that we pay to a thought, what we experience existentially through our five senses and through our inner reality, the world of imagination and rational thought, our mental processes and rational analyses.
Contrary to the other two levels, the conscious mind is fully under our control, unless we are drugged or asleep. It is through it that we relate to others and to ourselves, it allows us to be free, autonomous and independent. However, experts say that this level of consciousness in relation to the other levels, keeping in mind the image of the iceberg, takes up only 10% of our mind, the remaining 90% is made up of the preconsciousness and unconsciousness.
The Johari window
Created by psychologists Joseph Luft (1916-2014) and Harrington Ingham (1916-1995), it is one of the most popular concepts of psychology, a direct application of the Freudian concepts of consciousness and unconsciousness. Based on what is conscious and what is unconscious in us, these psychologists have distinguished four types of identities inside of each person: the open self, the blind self, the hidden self and the unknown self.
The open self – It is the part of myself that I know and others also know because I choose to reveal it. It is the point where my opinion about myself coincides with others’ opinions of me. For example, I recognize that I am a good speaker and others also recognize me as such.
The blind self – It is the part of myself that I do not know but others know. I never see my face as it truly is but others do. What I know of my face is an image that the mirror reflects, but it is still only a reflection, it is not truly my face because there are no perfect mirrors. The other, precisely because he is outside of me, has an unimpeded perspective that I cannot have. Only those who are outside the forest can see the forest, those inside it see only trees. We have an experience of the blind self when we eat with others and a speck of food gets stuck on our face – I don’t see it, but others do.
The hidden self – It is the part that I know about myself which I decide not to reveal; it is my intimacy and privacy, the skeleton in the closet. Eventually, part of this material is revealed to a close friend, depending on the level of trust and how old is our friendship.
The unknown self – It is the part that I do not know about myself and others evidently also do not know. We are a mystery to ourselves and to others. This is the unconscious part that we have already spoken about, it is made up of materials that I do not know but at any moment can emerge and be seen by me or by others through my body language.
3 divisions of the mind
According to Freud, our mind is divided into three different compartments that communicate with each other. We can also understand them as three entities with different functions that interact within our mind.
These three entities are not of the same age; the oldest, the first to be formed, or that which has existed since the beginning is the ID – it is made up of a set of uncoordinated instinctive drives and urges. The next to be formed is the EGO, the organized, operative and realistic part of our mind. Lastly, the SUPEREGO emerges and acts as the ambassador of culture or society in our psyche and as such is made up of rules, norms, laws and moral values to be observed and respected, but it is also the power or the judge and police that enforce these laws and regulations.
THE ID
When a baby is born, he only has the id, a simple and archaic psyche. The infant is not aware of himself, does not know that he exists, and only has survival instincts and needs that must be met without delay, and for that he uses crying. Hence the saying, “whoever does not cry does not suckle”.
In the id mode, the baby is self-centered, completely self-absorbed and selfish, without the slightest consideration for others: he alone exists and others must revolve around him. If he is hungry at 3 a.m. he cries at this hour until he is fed, it matters not to him if his father and mother need to sleep to work the next day.
When the id wants something, there is nothing more important in this world than its will, because it operates on the pleasure principle, that is, it seeks pleasure at all cost and avoids pain. No matter how old we are, the id never disappears, nor is it replaced by the other entities that arise later. It remains always as the seat of the most basic instincts, those of survival, the Eros and Thanatos, affection and aggression, as well as the most basic needs – hunger, thirst, warmth, comfort and the deepest desires.
THE EGO
Around the age of three and by virtue of the relationships between the child and his caregivers, the surrounding environment, another entity called the ego is born. The child starts to understand that other people also have needs and desires, and that being impulsive and selfish is not the best way to have his needs met, and can even be counterproductive in the long run.
The ego is not against the id’s needs, on the contrary, it is completely in solidarity with the id, but the ego realizes that it must be smart in finding ways to meet id’s needs, taking into account the requirements of reality, especially the needs of others. The ego works on the reality principle; this does not mean that it has given up on pleasure and self-fulfillment, it only gives up on its immediate realization, taking the longer and more time-consuming path, and adopting a more realistic and safer strategy, conforming to the reality of the situation.
If life’s objective for the id is to avoid pain and be happy, so it is for the ego, only their strategy is different. The id thinks that it can be happy alone, the ego discovers that it cannot be happy alone, that this is not realistic. Meeting the needs of others is as important to my happiness as it is to theirs.
The ego is the conscious part of our personality that uses reason and logic to try to obtain the cooperation of the unrealistic id. It operates under the reality principle, seeking to reconcile the demands of the id with those of the superego, deciding on the most realistic route.
THE SUPEREGO
Around the age of five, the last entity of our mind is born. The superego is our moral conscience, what we are “called to be” that develops due to the moral or ethical restrictions that our caregivers place on us. The superego or moral conscience tells us what is right or wrong, what is good or bad, what is appropriate and socially correct and accepted, and what is not.
It is our cultural baggage, the way society expects us to act; it is made up of endless lists of rules, laws, norms, moral values, traditions concerning everything and everyone. When you follow the commands of the superego, you may be rigid and repressed, but proud. If you don’t, you may feel anxious and guilty.
The protagonists or characters that interact in many, if not all, our inner dialogues are these three entities: Id – Ego – Superego. The id that claims unconditional satisfaction of its needs and enjoyment of pleasure; the ego that attempts to fulfill its needs, same as id’s, by taking a more realistic approach that is, harmonizing its own needs with the needs of the others; lastly, the superego as the voice of moral conscience that tries to persuade the id and the ego to abandon the search for pleasure to dedicate themselves to the cultivation of ideas and high moral values, and is what makes us feel guilty when we are not as what we could be.
In order to differentiate in our mind the voice of the ego from that of the superego or moral conscience, we need to pay attention to certain words. If the inner message begins with “you must…” or “you should…”, it most certainly comes from our superego and is an inner voice that during our upbringing was an outer voice. In the process of learning and internalizing these outer messages, some parents have noted that upon receiving these messages from them, their children would repeat them quietly to themselves.
The superego, as we’ve said before, is the enforcer of culture or society within our psyche, and it works more or less like a Trojan horse, through which society invades our thoughts and conquers us from within, making us its servant. Under the superego we are uncritically obedient to the dictates imposed on our ego without verifying them. In short, the superego is a little dictator within us that represses both the id and the ego, and replaces them at command of our thoughts, feelings and actions.
Towards a consultative not executive superego
As an example, the interaction between these three entities of our mind could take place in the following way: the id says, “I feel like eating cakes”, the superego says, “you can’t, you shouldn’t”, the ego analyzes the issue and decides saying either “I want to eat cakes” or “I don’t want to eat cakes”. The matter can be different, but these are the operative lines of our behaviour; the id says “I feel like it”, the superego says “you can’t, you shouldn’t, you have to…”, and the ego says “I want or I don’t want”. What is good for the id, and eventually also for the ego, is translated by the superego as illegal, bad for the health or a sin.
Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication has taught us that everything we do out of duty, obligation, or imposition subverts our psyche, making us slaves because we had no choice in the matter, it was imposed on us. We are not born to be slaves, human life exists only in freedom, freedom is the oxygen for the soul.
“You have to...”, “you should...” are words that a psychotherapist would never use with his patients, even if the patient asks for advice saying, “What should I do?” The psychotherapist’s respond would certainly be, “What do you want to do? What would you like to do?” What a psychotherapist doesn’t do with his client, we shouldn’t do to ourselves either.
That is why, as Rosenberg used to say, in life we do only what we like; “whoever runs for pleasure never tires”, whoever runs out of duty or obligation, does it against his will and out of negative energy, so sooner or later he abandons it.
We don’t need a superego that massacres and suppresses the id and the ego imposing on us behaviours that we don’t understand and did not choose. We only need the ego as the referee, an internal regulator. The ego is the son of the id, born from natural means, when the id realized for itself that it wasn’t possible to satisfy its personal needs to the detriment of others’ needs.
Therefore, the same mechanism that led to the formation of the ego from the id, is what should accompany each of our daily decisions. It is possible to maintain a dialogue between the ego and the id, without the superego having an active voice, but rather be used as a simple consultative database without any executive decision making power.
In a mind where the superego has executive power, the id and the ego are forced to act this or that way, and they usually go underground and act in a sneaky and subversive or terrorist-like way as we see in countries ruled under dictatorship. The superego is the law, the king, and accountable to no one. The superego rewards the ego and the id with the feeling of pride of duties accomplished, even though they have acted against their own will and nature, even though they have sacrificed their true happiness. When the ego and the id, unwilling to give up their identity and happiness, rebel and disobey the superego, the latter punishes them with the guilt complex.
On the other hand, in a mind where the executive power does not belong to the superego but to the ego, this latter being faithful to the natural way the id was formed, does not seek to impose anything on the id, on the contrary, it seeks reasons to appease it and make it see for itself which way to go.
Unrestricted satisfaction of all desires is not conducive to well-being, nor is it the way to happiness or even to maximum pleasure. ERICH FROMM, To Have or To Be?
What Erich Fromm, a follower of Freud, discovered is that the id with the help of the ego can discover things for itself: the unlimited satisfaction of our desires, without any restrictions, does not lead to maximum pleasure, but to self-destruction. The restrictions that limit pleasure do not come from the superego, but from reality.
We know that a small amount of alcohol, especially in red wine, is good for the health; exceeding this quantity however overloads the liver. If this is done regularly, it will lead to cirrhosis and death. To continue drinking, that is, to continue enjoying the pleasure of drinking, this needs to be limited or restricted. This is not an imposition of the superego in the sense that drinking is a sin, but rather an “imposition” of reality.
For the ego, the question is not what I should or should not do, but rather what are the consequences of my actions, where will they take me, what kind of person will I be by taking this or that road. We are what we decide to be, each decision that we make has contributed in some way to the person we are presently.
As we saw above, the id acts on our mind in an unconscious way. The aim is for the ego to act on the id, and in this way the two are interactive in a constant dialogue where the superego is consulted. Saint Francis of Assisi used this technique to overcome the so-called bad or sexual thoughts.
The id says to the ego, “I feel like having sex with that woman”, the ego does not suppress the id, but follows its line of thought and says, “very well, but you know that she can fall in love with you; are you willing to have a relationship with her? This relationship may require a lifetime commitment, are you ready for that? This same sexual act can lead to a new life, are you ready to be a father?” With this type of dialogue, the id ends up accepting that it is not convenient to have sex with this woman that it is attracted to, because it would take it to where it does not want to go.
In all this process the superego was not needed for anything, it remains as a database that can be consulted in case of doubt. The cultural traditions, the idiosyncrasy of our culture, our faith, the Bible, the doctrines of the Church, the examples of the saints and other heroes of society, all belong to this database of how society understands it should be.
If the above dialogue was between the id and the superego, it would be entirely different. “I want to have sex with that woman,” says the id, ”You can’t,” says the superego; “Why not?” asks the id, “Because it is a sin,” says the superego and here the dialogue ends. It ends like many father and child dialogues, “Because I said so,” says the father.
The ego, on the other hand, is rational and reasonable, and is guided fundamentally by the reality of the situation, by the knowledge of human nature, by its own experience, learning from its own mistakes and from the experiential mistakes of others. For example, from the experience of others I know that drugs are harmful, I don’t need to experiment them myself.
In summary, these are the questions that must be present in a constructive dialogue between the id and the ego in a given situation that requires a decision:
- What is it all about? Realistic analysis of the situation and what it requires realistically?
- Where will this course of action take me, what kind of person will I become if I take this path?
- Who, besides myself, will be affected by my hypothetical decision and by the actions that this involves?
- Are there alternatives? If there are no alternatives, there are no moral problem: what has no solution, is solved. The question now is whether or not to accept reality.
Freud understood that the first five years of life are crucial for the rest of our lives. In this first period of our psychosexual development, we cross through three stages. In each of these three stages our psyche focuses its attention exclusively on one part of the body. When the basic need of this particular part of the body that must be met is not adequately met, the individual becomes obsessed, fixated, trapped or held at this stage, having difficulty transitioning to the next one.
Oral stage from 0 to 1
As food is the primary concern of an infant, his sexual satisfaction is obtained through this means, which is both a source of nourishment and a source of pleasure. The infant finds gratification through oral activities such as feeding, sucking on pacifier or finger, and babbling. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the adult stage there is a sexual practice called oral sex.
An excessive stimulation and prolonged stay beyond one year of age in this stage can lead the child to acquire addictions in adulthood such as tobacco and alcohol, and to be very talkative. On the contrary, poor stimulation and forcing the child to move to the next stage before his time can turn the child into a sarcastic and overly argumentative adult.
Anal stage from 1 to 3
The time arrives for toilet training, or sphincter control training especially the anus. This is the child’s first act of humanity, as animals have no control over their sphincters. Since the child is aware that parents attach great importance to bowel movement or controlling the anus, he begins to transfer the pleasure he feels in the mouth from eating, to the pleasure that he feels in the anus when defecating, retaining or eliminating feces. Evidently the practice of anal sex is linked to this stage, in as much as oral sex is attached to the oral stage.
Excessive training period beyond what’s reasonable leads the child to be stubborn, stingy, retentive, to be a lover of wealth and thrifty. On the contrary, sloppy training leads the child to be unkempt, to be a disordered adult, with little connection to wealth and a spender.
Genital stage from 3 to 5
Probably due to their proximity to the anus and self-exploration, the child eventually discovers the genitals as a source of pleasure superior to the first two areas. From this moment onward, it is in this zone that the child seeks pleasure. At this age, the child is aware of the gender difference, masculine and feminine, falls in love with the father and is jealous of the mother if the child is a girl, or falls in love with the mother and is jealous of the father if the child is a boy.
Inadequate management of this stage makes the child fearful and anxious in relationships with the opposite sex. This stage is important because while oral and anal gratifications are selfish and lead the child to focus on self, genital gratification, by virtue of the fact that the genitals exist in two incomplete modalities, leads the child to go out of himself or herself and seek the opposite sex.
The pleasure principle
It seeks the immediate fulfillment of one’s basic needs, urges and desires, hunger, thirst, anger and sex. As we have seen earlier, this is the principle by which the id operates: to seek pleasure at all costs, give to those who hurt and avoid pain.
A person fixated at this stage of human development kills and dismembers without mercy, without any accusation from his conscience. He seeks sexual pleasure by raping and abusing children because it matters not the pain he causes others, but only his pleasure; others do not exist, they are reduced to instruments of pleasure.
The reality principle
It is the principle by which the ego acts; under the influence of this principle, the person seeks the fulfillment of these same desires and urges, because they come from human nature, but in a realistic and socially appropriate, accepted, and sustainable way like the principles of ecology. The reality principle logically assesses the cost and benefit, the pros and cons of an action before deciding to act on or to abandon an impulse.
For Freud, psychological maturity is the child’s passage from the pleasure principle to the reality principle. The person who successfully makes this transition does not need the superego, in the same manner that a person who is just, supportive, psychologically mature does not need the police or the courts because he does not prevaricate in his social life. The police and the courts are needed for those who have never really transitioned from the pleasure principle to the reality principle.
Defence mechanisms
They are the immature ways of resolving the conflict between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, between the id and the superego, in line of a weak and uninfluential ego.
Repression – The form that the ego takes to avoid pain in face of traumatic experiences. A child who is physically or sexually abused forgets everything in its entirety because he or she cannot cope with the pain; the consciousness does not have the capacity to deal with the event or withstand the pain.
Displacement – To direct feelings of aggression towards a less threatening object. For example, the boss mistreat the employee, who unable to mistreat the boss in return, abuses his wife instead, the wife in turn mistreats the son, and the son mistreats the dog or cat.
Rationalization – In order to defend oneself from pain or other setbacks, such as guilt or trying to avoid taking responsibility for what has happened, the person finds a logical explanation to justify a behaviour. An obvious example is the tale of the fox and the grapes: since it cannot jump high enough to reach the grapes, the fox declares them unripe.
Reaction or Self-deception – To think and behave in a way contrary to what one truly thinks and feels. A woman who loves a man whom she cannot have, behaves as if she hates him. We see this defence mechanism at work in many movies; there is also a saying that alludes to this: “Whoever disdains wants to buy”. Whoever points out defects in an article is because he wants to buy it.
Projection – To attribute our socially unacceptable desires and urges onto other people. A constantly grumpy person complaining that it is very hard for him to relate to other family members because they are all so difficult.
Regression – To return to behaviours characteristic of a previous stage of development. For example, after the parents’ divorce, the child does not want to sleep alone and sleeps with the mother.
Denial – To distort reality to accommodate the deepest desires. For example, an alcoholic who insists he is not one; a smoker who brags that he can quit anytime if he wanted to do so; or another who jokingly admits that it is easy to quit smoking, he has done it 20 times.
Techniques of psychoanalytic therapy
As we have said, psychoanalysis is not only a general theory of the genesis and structure of our personality, but also a form of therapy. There are five techniques that Freud used to call the subconscious to the consciousness of the ego and thus be able to interact with it to solve problems.
Free association – The patient is invited to say whatever comes to mind in an uncritical way, without hiding anything, without previous judgment; to say everything that comes to mind without taking into account how painful, irrelevant or stupid this can be.
Interpretation – The analyst explains to the patient the meaning of everything he said during the free association.
Dream analysis – It is the highway to the unconsciousness; some memories are so far away from the consciousness of the patient, so suppressed and hidden, that they reveal themselves only in dreams and express themselves in a phantasmagorical and symbolic way to get the mind’s attention.
Resistance analysis – During the course of therapy, resistance can be created on the part of the patient who manifests this by not paying for the appointments, arriving late or inventing reasons for not coming to the therapy. This type of resistance must be analyzed in order for the therapy to be successful.
Transference analysis – Finally, transference is something that arises in the course of therapy both on the part of the patient and on the part of the therapist. In order to avoid collusion between the psychotherapist’s personal issues and the patient’s or client’s personal issues, the former needs to deal with his own transference in a psychotherapeutic session that he regularly has with his supervisor who is also a psychotherapist. The client or patient is made aware of his transference by the psychotherapist when he asks questions like, “Who do I remind you of? What significant member of your past am I representing to you now?”
Conclusion
Mature human behavior requires the SUPEREGO (Morals) to be only consultative, therefore exempted from any legislative and executive power which are to be carried out by the EGO (Reason) with whom the ID (Instinct & Emotion) gets along better.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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