What Is Spiritual Psychology?

Psychoanalytic psychology is a major school of thought in modern Western psychology. It was born in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is not only a method of treating mental illness, but also a set of psychological theories that have gradually formed in medical practice. The founder is Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. Representatives include Anne Freud and Melanie Klein. By the 1920s, the theory of this genre gradually expanded to all areas of social science, and developed into an all-encompassing philosophy, which constituted a major social trend of thought in the modern West. ^[1]

Pioneering research on subconscious mind

Prior to psychoanalytic psychology, except for behaviorism, traditional psychology focused on consciousness. Although some scholars have discussed the problem of subconsciousness in history, the psychology system that really takes subconsciousness as the research object is only psychoanalytic psychology. In other words, Freud broke the tradition of rationalism, affirmed the role of irrational factors in behavior, and created a new era for the establishment of a subconscious psychological system.

Pioneering new fields of personality dynamics and psychology

Traditional psychology often explores from the outside to the inside, while psychoanalytic psychology studies from the inside to the outside, from the deep to the surface. In Freud's view, human beings are an energy system and a power system, which determine the psychological structure and personality model of a person. In other words, instinct and desire are the driving force and cause of the development of human psychology or personality. From this, Freud established dynamic psychology.

He pioneered Western personality psychology and called it an influential school. People have a long history of observing and recording abnormal psychological phenomena, but systematic discussions and scientific explanations have started from the new psychology of psychoanalysis. He transformed perverted psychology from a simple description to a study of mental motivation. Although the theoretical system of psychoanalysis is somewhat unreasonable, Freud opened a new path for the development of abnormal psychology.

Promote the development of self-psychology

Traditional psychoanalysis belongs to the category of ego psychology. Although some psychologists have unique views on the self, they have not systematically developed their theories. Only Freud is the founder of self-psychology. Hartman On this basis, a self-psychology system was established, and Erickson was the greatest theoretical authority on contemporary self-psychology, developing self-psychology into a lifelong developmental psychology.

Laying a new modern medical model

The traditional biomedical model ignores human social and psychological functions. Freud emerged from a different force and proposed that trauma was the main cause of the disease. He advocated the use of psychoanalysis to discover the psychological contradictions of patients who were suppressed into the subconscious to treat the disease, and opened up a new contemporary medical approach that emphasized psychotherapy.

Irrational tendency

Although Freud advocated the creation of human life by science and rationality, his subconscious determinism fully revealed the tendency of irrationalism, which is mainly manifested in: disregarding and demeaning the position and role of manifest consciousness, and exaggerating the significance of subconsciousness; The value of reason, strongly advocates universalism.

Idealistic tendency

Freud ignores the objective content and social roots of psychological activity. He has three well-known hypotheses: naturalize human things, biologicalize psychological things, and psychologicalize social things. Therefore, Freud's psychoanalysis eventually fell into the idealism of biological determinism and mental determinism.

Methodological limitations

Freud's theory of psychoanalysis is derived from his practice of treating patients with psychosis and neurosis, so he draws the laws of abnormal psychology. But he deduced them to all normal people, and made a partial error in methodology. Moreover, he ignored the differences between individuals and groups, individual psychology and sociopsychology, instinct and culture, and used the psychoanalytic theory on individual, individual psychology and instinct to explain human sociocultural and historical phenomena, and also made methodological errors. ^[9]